


For Most Interesting Reasons

by lalaietha



Category: Kate and Cecelia - Caroline Stevermer & Patricia Wrede
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:03:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 28,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It might have happened like that. Except that the dream of it all drove Cecelia Tarleton to wakefulness as fast as a rifle shot and none of it faded once she was there. At three o'clock in the morning, she sits up, gets up, fumbles in the darkness for a lucifer and a candle, and then returns to the bed to shake her husband awake with no gentleness at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melliyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/gifts).



> Follows my main submission for this assignment, [Nothing At All Unusual](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139514). This was written as a treat for Melliyna, for Yuletide2010, that then got horrifically out of hand. It was written with the pure and simple intent of pleasing, and amusing, its recipient, and at the challenge of including _all_ her requested elements from her Dear YT Author letter.
> 
> If, in the course of doing so, the author has made some sacrifices on the altar of anachronism or implausibility, she begs your pardon: she does know better, but that wasn't the point.

Thomas was his mother's son. It was one of those family truths which go unspoken because they're simply obvious. Not that this meant he was his mother's favourite, as such. Or her second-best, for that matter. It had nothing to do with that. It was simply that, if you looked at father, mother, and sons, it was impossible not to see that Edward came very close to his father in miniature, if lacking a few of his father's vices, where with Thomas God had reused most of the ingredients used to make Sylvia, but added a boy's arrogance, sense of adventure and sheer, unreasoning faith in his own immortality, just to make things interesting.

That was why it would all unravel, the witch knew. There was a question of how much would be broken before it did, how much misery and loss would come to pass first, but then, Sylvia had lost a son and near-sacrificed a husband for what she felt must be done. And then waited years for the chance at revenge, which she took. Quietly, efficiently, brutally - and for her own satisfaction alone. They were deceptive, mother and son, the witch was well aware, in a way that most weren't. Their love of outward show, outrageous action, blunt speech and self-congratulating achievement was an effective mask. It was the best kind of mask: it was the truth.

It just wasn't, the witch could have told anyone but said to no one, the whole truth.

She was a witch. Not a sorceress, or magician, or wizard - not even (awkward, terrible construction) a "wizardess" as some, overzealous in their attempts to find parity and equality had begun to call it. Foolishness, of course: a wizard was a wizard, no matter their sex, and "magician" was a more mellifluous word anyway, the difference melded until there wasn't any to bother minding. And a witch was a witch, even when the witch was a man.

There weren't many of her kind, these days. The Churches had never liked them, and the Colleges with their fine gentlemen made quite sure to distance themselves from the taint of the word. They didn't like the practices, anyway. The Colleges liked magic that would sit up and bark when told, do tricks and chase its tail, be written down neatly in books, go to bed when no longer wanted, and above all, be describable by the reasoned, rational discourses preferred by educated men in their private studies. It was all ridiculous, of course. Even the magics they ascribed to were by no means so tame. But as long as they stayed within certain bounds they could pretend their work was wholly under their control, and only come up against the Other Kind when they could frown and shake their fingers at the bad old days, at dark and inexplicable, messy magics.

Like the one she was performing, at command, leashed and collared just like those so-tame magics - and just as ready to turn at the slightest fissure she could use. But now, she only looked up and said, in her coolest voice, "Once I begin this, we are bound - _you_ are bound. The spell will draw him to us, no matter what happens. The world itself will conspire to bring our paths to cross. There will not be any turning back."

The man who held the keys to her chains, metaphorically speaking, merely grunted. He had been a tall and powerfully built man, once upon a time. Now his limbs were wasted away, and his face skeletal. "You know it will work?" he demanded.

"The spell is perfect," she replied. "I've used it before."

He didn't notice the evasion of his question. Men like him seldom did, when it came from a woman. "Do it," he said, and she looked down and pierced her palm with the knife.

She hated doing that. It always sounded so nice and clean and simple in novels and romances, where this sort of thing went on all the time. But it was actually quite difficult to force yourself to cut into your own flesh, it hurt quite a bit, and you knew it was going to hurt, too. Your whole being cried out to you to stop it, and instead you had to just keep pressing.

Her blood dyed the straw and silk red, instead of pale brown and white. Somewhere underneath, in the rest of the mix of herbs, essences and particular kinds of sand, was one of her jailer's hairs and a clipping of his nail. Somewhere underneath they, too, were being covered with the sticky thickness of blood.

She wiped the knife with a clean undyed cloth and then bundled it up and clutched it in her bleeding left hand, closing her fingers to press it against her palm and (she hoped) stem the flow. With her right hand, she took the bowl and emptied it into the brazier, over all the flames.

She half expected her jailer to point out that nothing had happened, but apparently he was now accustomed enough to the working of such things not to be quite so stupid. She bound up her hand with bandages and another clean pad of cloth, used sea-water to rinse bowl and knife and then thrust them in the uncleansed earth outside, before she came back in.

It took an hour for the flames to finish dying out. When they had there was nothing left, not even ash or spark, except for some melted, twisted bits of glass at the bottom of the brazier. When she showed her jailer, and said, "It is begun," he grunted, got up, left the room and locked the door behind him.

The witch took up the glass pieces from the bottom of the brazier. She wrapped them in the cloth she had used to wipe her knife and slid all of it into an inner pocket under her skirt. She was a witch: more than just magic, she felt the flow of the world around her, of pressures and powers, and to the Schofield family she was particularly well attuned. It would unravel: she knew that. She even knew why.

Now it only remained to find out how, and hope she survived the process.


	2. Chapter 2

It might have happened like this:

By making the terrible mistake of behaving somewhat like a responsible adult where other people could see, the Marquis of Schofield comes to be sent to Paris on official business for the Crown. He is annoyed, but not overly rebellious; after all, it means absolutely nobody can attempt to talk him into sitting through debates in Parliament, and it will afford him the opportunity to spend time with his mother. The official business, while tedious, is not horrifically taxing, and there are worse places in the world than Paris in late spring.

Due to her present delicate condition, and its effects in terms of increasing the delicacy of her stomach, his wife the Marchioness remains in London with dear friends; she will join the Marquis if she feels stronger, but everyone (including the older women of her family) feel very strongly that she should stay put.

The world is at peace. The weather is good. There is no reason for concern, and the Marquis has none.

Then there is an empty bed at the Black Swan in Calais.

After her husband's disappearance the Marchioness begins to have bad dreams. She begins to see things that aren't there. Her illness lasts till after she delivers her daughter. It ends badly: thought it is hushed up, there are whispers even at the funeral that she smothered the baby and then hung herself. After that, nobody is surprised when word reaches London of the death of the Dowager Marchioness Lady Sylvia, apparently in her sleep (though, they say from the look of her face, not in a pleasant dream).

It is entirely tragic when Mr James Tarleton, a gentleman of some renown in the recent war, falls ill with a virulent fever that claims his life after a week of doctors and bleeding. After that, no one is surprised when Mrs Cecelia Tarleton disappears, and is not seen again. Most assume her body came to rest at the foot of some sea-cliff.

Some days after this last, the body of a dark-haired young woman is found in the Seine. Nobody really notices. Although she is reasonably well-dressed, nobody knows who she is, and she goes to rest in a pauper's grave.

 

It might have happened like that. Except that the dream of it all drove Cecelia Tarleton to wakefulness as fast as a rifle shot and none of it faded once she was there. At three o'clock in the morning, she sits up, gets up, fumbles in the darkness for a lucifer and a candle, and then returns to the bed to shake her husband awake with no gentleness at all.

 

****

Sometimes, James picked the most irritating and inappropriate occasions to sleep deeply. " _James,_ " Cecelia repeated, shaking his shoulder ever-more-firmly. "Wake up this instant. We must get Charles ready and go to London at _once_. Oh come on, darling, _wake up._ "

James blinked his eyes slowly open, and frowned sleepily at her. "Cecy?" he said, and yawned. "Are you ill? What's the matter?"

"We have to go to London," she repeated, "right now, before Thomas gets on the ship, he absolutely must not go to Calais. Come on, get up - I can send him a message while you get things here in order, but you know Thomas, he'll want to argue about it in person." When James gave her a blank, stupid look, Cecelia clapped her hands once. "Now, James!" And then she called, "Walker!"

The clear, perfect memories of the dream-that-wasn't (Cecelia was quite sure about that) were like fire in her brain, chivvying her on and telling her that she was _not_ moving fast enough, that time was of the essence, and that - that there was something else. Something else clouding on the edges. She needed to talk to Thomas, he needed to tell her things (tell them all things), they should probably talk to Lady Sylvia as well, and above all, above all else that mattered, Thomas must not leave England.

At least not alone.

"Cecelia," James said. He sounded concerned, and got to his feet. He caught her arm and touched a hand to her forehead. Cecelia shook him off, impatient.

"I'm not feverish," she informed him. "I've had a dream, except it isn't. It was something like a vision, but not really that either - oh don't ask me to _explain_ these things, James!" That was a little bit unfair. It wasn't James' fault that he wasn't a magician. Cecelia sailed past it anyway, and added, "We have to go now, James. Kate and Thomas' lives may depend on it."

"Cecy," James said very firmly, and caught both her arms this time, making her turn to face him. "Stop. You're frantic, and it's three o'clock in the morning. You're going to slow down a moment and tell me what on earth you're on about, or I am going to have you see a physician, do you understand me?"

With the dream - no, vision, maybe that was a better word, with the vision prodding her on, Cecelia almost wanted to hit him. The concern in his eyes stopped her, thought. She became aware that she was standing in her nightclothes, a candle - no candlestick holder, just the candle - in one hand, and that it was indeed the wee hours of the morning. It was, perhaps, not entirely unreasonable that James be concerned. Or dubious.

She drew in a deep breath and tried to put her mind in some sort of order, and to summon up at least the appearance of rational, coherent sense. "I've just had a dream," she told him. "Except that I'm quite sure it's not just a dream, James. I'm very, very certain it's a vision or some kind of warning, that it - " she paused, and struggled with the words, "- that it either is real, or possibly it might become real if something isn't done. I'm _very sure_ , James. I'm as sure as anything - I'm as sure," she said, lighting on it, "as I was that I needed to cut the ribbon Miranda Griscomb tried to strangle you with into pieces."

James looked unconvinced, but he held out his hand for the candle. Cecelia gave it to him, and then pretended not to hear him muttering about magicians and looking after them as he turned and went in search of a candlestick holder for it.

"Very well," he said, in one of his slightly more pompous airs after he'd found what he wanted, put the candle on the night-table, and got his muttering under control. "What was your dream?"

"Vision," Cecelia corrected firmly.

"Vision," James agreed, only a little as if he was humouring her. "Tell me."

It was more difficult to describe than she'd been anticipating. In the vision, she'd been everywhere and everyone at once; it turned out to be quite the trick to put that into words. But she did the best she could, and with as much confidence as she could, finishing with, "And I _know_ it isn't just a dream, James."

"And you think we should run off to London in the middle of the night because of this?"

Cecelia narrowed her eyes at her husband's tone. "You don't believe me," she accused him. He tried to sidestep the accusation by sitting on the bed and holding up his hands.

"Even if we left immediately, we'd hardly reach London in time - "

"You weren't listening," she interrupted him. "I _said_ I'd speak to Thomas, I can get a message to him in less than a heartbeat, it's just that you know at best I'll get him to agree to put it off until I can get there and we can convince him in person." When James still looked sceptical, she took a deep breath and did something she never did, saying, "My hand to God, James, when have I _ever_ been wrong about this sort of thing when I was this sure?" And then, because sometimes it helped not to play fair, she added, "And which would you rather? That I drag us off to London on a foolish impulse, or that we, Thomas and Kate _and_ Lady Sylvia all end up horribly dead?"

James' lips compressed. "That," he said, "is dirty play, Cecy." Cecelia merely put her hands on her hips.

"Well?" she demanded. "Which would you rather?"

 

It was on the tip of James' tongue to say that he would _rather_ he hadn't been woken up out of a deep sleep by his wife running around like a madwoman insisting that her dreams were real. But the words got caught on the fear - the actual, honest to God fear - that he saw underlying the irritation, impatience and defiance on Cecelia's face, and on the knowledge that he wasn't a magician and _couldn't_ judge these things, and finally on the fact that Cecy was right: she never had been wrong, when she was this kind of sure.

"Very well," he said, capitulating. Cecelia's eyes widened, and she very impulsively (and slightly awkwardly, given that he was sitting and she standing) embraced him. He kissed her cheek, standing and saying, "You find a way to get Thomas' attention, I'll see things started."

He caught her arm and made her put on a house-coat before she tried to fly out the door and down the hall and a short flight of stairs to her work-room.

It took very little time to get everything well-begun, although from the servants there were quite a lot of the sort of blank faces that covered up incredulous and resentful looks when said looks were not to be borne. James was fully dressed when Amelia, Charles' nurse, tapped at the door and immediately curtseyed. "Begging your pardon, sir," she said, "but I've not woken the wee lad yet - he sleeps so deeply, I had a thought that it might be better if we just took him to the carriage in his nightclothes and he could sleep on his mother's lap or mine until a more civilized hour?"

Amelia was plain, square-shouldered and as far as James could tell, excellent at what she did. He nodded and gave his assent to the plan, and she curtseyed again and disappeared down the hall to the nursery.

Charles _was_ a heavy sleeper, and a regular one. James' aunt assured him that he simply did not _comprehend_ how much of a blessing that was; the fervency with which she said it made James believe her. James looked in on their son, as the quiet, bleary-eyed packing and preparation for the impromptu journey continued. Charles lay on his stomach, thumb in his mouth, chest rising and falling slowly. It occurred to him that it might be wiser to leave Charles here, but something deep in the pit of his stomach rejected that idea, vehemently.

If there was as much danger as Cecy thought, James reasoned, then even if it was the centre of the mess, it was probably _still_ wiser to have such a vulnerable target right under the wing of the two - no, three, because if Cecy was right he couldn't imagine it would take long for Lady Sylvia to arrive - magicians he regarded highest in the world.

Amelia came beside him and said, in a low voice, "I've packed all the pouches and charm-bags and aught that missus has ever made for him, sir." Her tone, though very quiet, was brisk and business-like. When James glanced at her sharply, she returned his gaze with an even one of her own. "I can't see a reason for all this except that there's something dangerous," she said, "begging your pardon, and I thought it best to be prepared. If there's anything else I ought to do, Mr Tarleton?"

He considered her, and shook his head. "I'll have Mrs Tarleton tell you if there is," he replied.

When he went back, Walker was helping Cecy dress and settle her hair, with many a suppressed yawn. "Well?" he asked, as Cecy covered her mouth to hide the yawn she didn't bother suppressing.

"You know Thomas," she said, waving one hand. "He's cross as a bear and demands to know the meaning of this, but he'll wait until we get there. Kate sends her love."

Too much association with Thomas meant that a rather sardonic reply to that was also on the tip of his tongue, but instead, he merely remarked, "Amelia thought it would be wisest to let Charles sleep as much as possible; he can be dressed whenever he wakes up in the morning. She's also packed up all the various protective things you've made for them, and wants to know if there's anything else."

"Oh, she's a dear," Cecy said, and hid another yawn. "No, darling, I'll let her know that's everything for now. Thomas and I will work something out whenever we get there and work out some idea of what's going on."

Which told James she'd had the same thought as he, about where it would be safest for their son to be.

"Shall we go then?" was all he said, and with a final, nearly jaw-cracking yawn, Cecy nodded.

James didn't say anything, and Cecy fell asleep against his shoulder almost immediately in the carriage. But he found himself hoping that this wasn't anything but, well, a foolish indulgence on his part of a moment of hysteria on hers.

He found himself hoping this, but he had very, very little faith that it was.


	3. Chapter 3

Thomas woke to Kate's very sleepy voice in his ear saying, "Thomas? Why is my mirror whispering your name?"

He was a light sleeper, and Kate's voice was only partly awake. He was almost certain at first that she was in fact talking in her sleep, murmuring at some dream-Thomas in near nonsense. But _her_ voice woke him enough that the repeated, insistent, sibilant sound of _Thomas. Thomas. Thomas. Thomas_ coming from somewhere behind him intruded itself very firmly into his awareness.

Thomas rolled over and squinted, frowning, at the mirror. He felt Kate turning rather more slowly, but didn't look, as a single glance had told him that his first instinct was not wrong: someone was, in fact, attempting to contact him through the looking glass.

Damn them, whoever they were. Thomas hated working with mirrors. His mother was fairly good at it, which only made his own slight clumsiness with the things - whether glass and silver, polished bronze, ink, water, or any other kind - more galling to him. He much preferred . . . well, any other method, frankly. Wind. Little birds folded out of paper flying in through windows. Real birds, enchanted to sing the message at someone. A rabbit with an envelope lashed to its back. Or, and here was a truly mad idea, _an actual human messenger_ , with a letter.

The mirror, however, continued to pulse a light glow and to whisper, _Thomas. Thomas. Thomas_ , until he was ready to throw the candlestick on the night-table at it.

Thomas sat up, considered the fact that he had no shirt, decided anyone trying to talk to him in the middle of the night via _mirrors_ didn't deserve propriety anyway, and flicked at hand at the mirror in the appropriate gesture, muttering the response-word under his breath.

It always took a moment for the other person's face to swim into view. This time, that swimming face was very familiar, and at least cut his profound irritation with a certain amount of fondness. If, also, a certain amount of bafflement, especially since the face was frowning in what was, for it, a look of profound concern.

Thomas dragged a hand over his own face. "Cecelia," he said, sighing. "As much as I do love you, what the _Hell_ do you want?"

Kate kicked him in the low back with a hissed, "Thomas! Your language!" As if a baby could possibly hear, or understand, or care what he said out here.

"You absolutely _must not_ go to France right now, Thomas," Cecy said, her face very grave and her eyes now very wide. "I mean it," she added, when he stared at her, at a loss for something to say - or at least, something to say that wouldn't get him kicked again by his wife, whose heels were rather small and sharp, when it came to that. "I've had a vision, and if you go to France, you and Kate and Lady Sylvia will all die, I think quite horribly."

Thomas blinked thoughtfully at the face in Kate's mirror. While most of him was trying to find something to say that wasn't, _Are you stark raving mad, girl?_ or _What the bloody Hell is that supposed to mean?_ or _Cecelia it is the middle of the damn night do you have_ any _brains in your witless head?_ (all of which would get him kicked, several of which weren't even fair, and one of which might make James try to hit him the next time they saw one another and there were much more interesting things to make James hit him over), a very small thought wormed its way into his head:

It would be nice to say that his life had been much simpler before he met either woman, the one in the mirror or the one lying behind him. The trouble was that it hadn't been.

 

The trouble with Cecelia was she resorted a sort of blatant blackmail at the drop of a hat, and waved Kate, and Kate's condition over Thomas' head (and over Kate's protests). Eventually, she managed to press her advantage to the point that he agreed not to leave immediately, as he had planned, but to at least delay his departure until she and James had arrived.

By the time the mirror dimmed, Thomas was in a truly foul temper. Instead of going back to bed, he pulled on his dressing gown, kissed Kate on the temple and insisted she go back to sleep, and stalked out into the darkness of the house, startling some of the staff and waving them away.

He had no real purpose other than, perhaps, giving himself enough time to mutter names at Cecelia _and_ her husband, for that matter, for going along with her, so that he could reliably go back to bed. But he ended up in the library, and was just being distracted by a treatise he'd been meaning to read for six months or more when he felt the sharp contact and demanding tug on his attention that meant, in essence, that his mother wanted a word.

"Oh for the love of Christ and every damn angel," he snapped, aloud, startling the maid who had (unasked, but rather intelligently) brought him a cup of tea with considerable amounts of brandy in it. "No, not you," he told her, taking the cup, "well done, now go away." And she fled.

Kate would have a Word with him over that, if she heard about it.

His mother did not actually need him to permit contact the way he'd done with Cecy and the mirror upstairs. (For that matter, he absently noted that he should add Cecy to the house wards.) The tug was clearly because she expected him to be asleep, as any reasonable human being might be at this ludicrous hour of the night when they had not had a particularly interesting party or ball to attend before hand.

He did not bother to open the link himself. He really did hate working with mirrors, and he resented the fact that, had he not already been awakened to his irritation, he would just have been awakened (to, very likely, his irritation). He simply dropped himself into an arm-chair after propping one of the mirrors on the wall against the ottoman so that it faced him, and waited for his mother to make use of it.

"Thomas," she said, the moment her face and torso had coalesced in the glass, showing that she sat at her own vanity mirror, "your manners deteriorate further and further each year." She spoke French, undoubtedly to spite him.

"It's the middle of the night, Mama," he retorted, likewise, but with an imperfect accent, just to spite _her_. "That time when people with sense are asleep."

"Then I can't imagine being awake would bother you," his mother returned.

It might have gone on like that for some time, except that his mother's voice held an edge that was genuine rather than merely irritable, and it brought Thomas up slightly short. He focused his attention back on his mother's mirror-image face, caught the tightness around her eyes that signified genuine anger, and sighed. "What _now_?" he demanded.

"When," she said, quiet and deadly, " _precisely_ , did you intend to tell me what you had done?"

There were generally reasons his mother did everything: she was just that sort of person. Thomas now suspected that she had chosen to speak in French at least in part so that the difference between the _tu_ she used for him, and the _vous_ she had just tossed out, would be readily apparent.

"What 'we' doing what? Three in the morning is no time for riddles, Mama." He was obviously in her bad graces for something, which meant that until he sorted out what it _was_ , there was no point in being conciliatory. She'd just get annoyed at it anyway.

It was a bit concerning that her mouth flattened into a thin, sharp line. "Son of mine," she said, speaking in the low, clear voice that was a danger signal in and of itself, "you are going to stop thinking like a spoiled aristocrat and _begin_ thinking like a half-competent magician, and you are going to think back over the past year and a half, and you are not going to say one - damn - word until you've done so. And I," she added, "am going to pretend that what you just said was a particularly limp and inept attempt at mischievous humour."

Thomas glared at her, but refused to let show that he hadn't the first idea what she was talking about and couldn't even _begin_ to imagine what on earth had crawled into her bonnet this time. In the past year, so far as being a _magician_ went, he'd done nothing at all of that much interest, beyond increasing study and a few things that Parliament thought were tricky but were, to be entirely frank, parlour tricks as far as Thomas was concerned. In fact, the only interesting thing he'd done at all was some work in the past winter on whether or not the properties of ice would be amenable to -

Oh, well, there was _that_ , he supposed. He hadn't mentioned the understanding between the four of them to his mother because she had refused to budge out of Paris for the last two years at all, and Thomas had not exactly found himself pining for the Continent, which made for a lot of letter-writing. And he did not fancy either writing in code nor allowing the cabinet noir to poke their noses into those particular parts of his life.

"If you mean my change in marital arrangements," he said, shifting into English and being slightly insolent on purpose, and caught the flicker in his mother's eyes, "then it's been a year and _eight_ months, not six," and there an irritated turn to her mouth, so he awarded himself a point and went on, "and I don't see what that has to do with anything of terrible importance, Mother."

His mother closed his eyes, as if he were being _particularly_ trying, and said, "Sometimes you are such an empty-headed numbskull that I _marvel_ that you are my son, that truly I bore you in my own womb. Tell me, Thomas, how many cardinal directions are there?"

"Really, Mother?"

"There are four, are there not?" she went on, back into French. "And elements. Four also, yes? And four is made up of units of two, am I correct?"

"I really don't seem to be necessary for this conversation," Thomas remarked.

"Two magicians, Thomas," his mother said, in a deadly quiet voice. "Two resonant non-magicians. Two women. Two men. Two marriages, two bonds equal to a marriage but having their root in other things. An intimacy between men and an intimacy between women. Two intimacies between man and woman that are _not_ a marriage. A magician in nearly every pair except the last, and in the last the magicians are doubled. Not to mention each one of you corresponding to one of the cardinals, with Katherine for air, James for Earth, Cecelia for water and you for fire, which _also_ happens to mean that in the doubled-pairs the cardinals are oppositionally matched - "

Thomas stared at his mother's reflection and, after a moment, managed to find his voice. "I think you've made your point, Mother," he said, in English, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. While he maintained his single scored point, he was forced to award her several dozen, and knew when he was genuinely beaten.

With that, Lady Sylvia Schofield sighed, and put a hand to your face. "And here I thought getting you to adulthood would be the difficult part. Thomas, after the chocolate pot, I thought you were going to be more _careful_."

"I could point out that it wasn't my idea," he retorted absently, "it was Cecy's."

"I love the child dearly," his mother replied, "but she has water's own gift at mixing sense and insanity - and her education has been nowhere as extensive as yours. Speaking of which, I hope to Hell you're taking the appropriate steps for the reputations that matter, son of mine, or I swear grown man or no, I shall tan your hide."

"Your faith in me is touching."

"My faith in you is apparently entirely too great," she returned, "considering. Now, why were you awake?"

The sudden change of direction caught Thomas slightly off-balance, given how caught up he was in considering what she had just brought to his attention. "What?"

"You were already awake when I called on you, Thomas. I've known you for all of your unbelievably charmed life, and you are _never_ on form just after you've been startled from deep sleep, so it's clear to me you were up before. Why?"

Thomas considered his chances of getting as far as the Colonies if he decided to run away, and then sighed. "I was awake, o my mother," he said, leaning back in his chair, "because Cecelia Tarleton had a dream which has made her absolutely certain that if I go to France, as I was so _politely_ requested to do by our charming Prince Regent, everyone will die a terrible death, including you, and possibly her brother's dog. She felt this was so terribly urgent as to require her immediate confidence to me, via Kate's mirror, and the Tarleton's rapid and abrupt departure from their own domicile with the intent of arriving here as soon as possible. In short, Mother, _everyone_ seems to feel the need to call on me through the glass tonight."

His mother was frowning. "Cecy hasn't been prone to visions before," she said, ignoring his complaint entirely. "Given the matrix, I can only agree that caution is needed, at least until we can consult."

"We?" Thomas said, and his mother snorted.

"I'm in Calais, idiot child," she said, with an irritated fondness. "I shall be there some time before James and Cecelia, I expect. I fully intend to have a look at what you've done, now that I've noticed."

It struck Thomas to demand of her what she'd been doing that led her to the discovery in the _first place_ , but he thought better of it. If she was going to arrive in person, he might as well leave it till then. "I? Am going back to bed," he announced, standing up. "I've had just about enough of tonight, and you can continue to scold me in person. À la prochaine, Mama." At which point he waved a hand at the mirror and cut the connection with a word.

Granted, it wouldn't do much - if his mother really wanted to carry on tonight, she could inhabit any mirror in the house she wished. But the gesture soothed his pride somewhat, enough to let him make his way back to bed.

"What took so long?" Kate yawned, drowsy, as he worked himself back under the coverlets. "Oh good Lord, Thomas, your feet are freezing - you have slippers for a reason!"

"I'll tell you about it in the morning," he said, sourly. She turned her head, giving him a sleepy imitation of her narrowed-eye look, but elected to snuggle down against him and drift off, rather than press him just now.


	4. Chapter 4

The potion that kept her jailer alive smelled wretched, and took all of her concentration and energy to concoct. It was something closer to wizardry than witchcraft, and so not her native skill.

Fortunately, he needed it only a few times in a year. What she gave him the rest of the time was simply herbs stewed in water - for now.

She tapped the rose-wood spoon on the side of the iron bowl and finished the Greek incantation. The ancient Persian would have been more potent, but she saw no reason to tell her jailer that. "Here," she said, standing up in a rustle of skirts and petticoats to cross the room to his arm-chair. She didn't bother to tell him that he should drink it quickly, as it would only taste fouler the longer he left it. It had been quite long enough by now for him to know that quite well.

"Schofield," her jailer said in a dusty voice, "has delayed his departure." That was all, but the criticism was implicit. She was well prepared for it, however, and merely returned to her table, clearing away the last of the debris of concoction.

"To have come at the request of the Prince of Wales would have put him in Calais with a bodyguard of officials, soldiers and hangers-on," she replied, calmly. "He will come to France. He has no choice." The gash on her palm, no longer bleeding but neither beginning to heal, tingled and burned. "And once we have him, we will have everything you want. But even you would have a difficult time stealing a Marquis and College Magician out from under the nose of a diplomatic deputation." With exquisite unconcern, she noted several observations on this particular brewing of the potion in her grimoire and then closed it, locking it and returning the key to about her neck. "As it stands," she added, "the Prince-Regent will be annoyed with him. Schofield is not a member of Cabinet and he avoids any possible whiff of responsibility, most of the time. He is much more content to play with magic and dally with his new wife. The delicate nature of politics means that the Prince-Regent must walk with care around the Schofields and their allies. He doesn't like it at the best of times. He'll like it even less now."

"And Thomas Schofield will come to France," her jailer said, with an undertone of threat.

"He has no choice," she agreed, repeating herself. She looked up at her jailer, to his still-handsome, distinguished face and dead, bitter eyes. "I told you, my lord," she said, falling back on the honourific she used as little as possible, "this is witchcraft, not wizardry. Wizardry imposes itself upon the world, wrenches magic into the shape the magician wishes it to be. Witchcraft shapes the world instead, so that events conspire as the witch desires."

Then she nearly bit her tongue, fearing she had given away too much. She kept her face calm and placid, as it always was, and her jailer merely grunted and got up, leaving the room.

The witch did not allow herself to relax, even as he was gone. Although she was alone in this room, with its narrow cot, its old divan and blankets, its tables and fire-place and single open window, its chests and boxes of everything she needed or claimed she did, she knew better than to think she was safe. Her jailer had enough money to employ petty wizards of the kind who were desperate for work all over France still, who had flourished under the Revolution and thrived under Napoleon and now found themselves at loose ends and held in much suspicion. Any one of them could be spying on her at any moment.

Instead, she got up and went to the small case on the mantel. She took out the bottle of clear liquid that she knew her jailer and his spies thought was laudanum, and wasn't. She measured her supposed dose into a glass and added water. Her jailer, she knew, intended to use it as another way to hold her when it ran out.

It was as dangerous, in its own way. To some people. She loathed it, wanted nothing more than to shatter the bottle. Than to scream and laugh and get horribly drunk. Find a lover and fall in deep passion with him the way she had once. To do everything the potion prevented. And to never, never float along beside another's soul again. Not in the rest of her life.

For now, though, the distance and placidity of it helped her. And she needed the knowledge it brought. And her jailer thought it was just a drug.

The potion tasted sweet. She drank all of it and then lay herself down on the divan in front of the fire, covering herself with the blanket, and let herself fall into the state that looked exactly like, and was not, sleep.

Oh, Thomas Schofield would come to France, _yes_. There was nothing on earth or in heaven that could stop him. She hadn't lied. She never lied. The spell was perfect, and it would work precisely as she'd said. It was the height of hubris, to use such a spell. It was as old as anything, and almost inevitably went awry, but her jailer hadn't asked that. If Thomas resisted too long, the world would do all kinds of things to bring him here. It might not stop short of starting another war between England and France, just to see that he had no choice.

It wouldn't get that far, she thought, drowsy, as the room began to fade and let other things take its place, other awarenesses. She had thought she would have to risk another set of spells, try to find a way to put them in motion under her jailer's nose; she had almost laughed aloud at the perfection of it all when, falling into this same sleep before, she had seen everything, every tie and promise lit up in all their beauty, and known she would not have to do anything at all.

Schofield was almost like Ulysses, was the last thing that the witch thought. Except that she couldn't imagine Athena wanting anything to do with him.


	5. Chapter 5

Kate glowed. If Cecelia didn't love her as much as she did, she would have found it hideously unfair. She herself had certainly _not_ glowed at any point of little Charlie's getting (or birth, frankly, but who did?). In fact, she had found it the most genuinely unpleasant seven months of her life, once she'd discovered herself in the delicate condition, and considered it a possible sign of incipient madness that she was seriously intending to do it again. Granted, her son had been an angel in almost every important way since, but still.

Kate, though, Kate was certainly glowing, if sleepy-looking, when she met Cecelia and James, Charlie in his father's arms, at the door of her London house. She wore a lovely morning-dress, one Cecelia hadn't seen before, in a very becoming shade of rose. Various servants hurried to deal with the baggage, the carriage, the horses and everything else; Amelia took draconian charge of all things to do with Charlie's belongings. Kate threw her arms around Cecelia's neck and kissed her cheek, an embrace which Cecelia returned with interest. Kate was slightly more circumspect with James, but only because it would have disturbed Charles, and she kissed Charles' cheek as well.

She was at least three months along, and though she glowed she didn't show in the slightest. Her hair was also behaving itself, which implied strongly to Cecelia that Lady Sylvia was in residence, and that -

\- was worrying.

All of this she managed to think before she had even managed to say, "Kate, you look truly wonderful, I think I'm jealous."

"Oh hush," Kate replied, "but it is good to see you. And you, James," she added, and then, "oh, come in, it's not so pleasant out here as all that and your things will be seen to."

James handed their son off to Amelia, without much protest, and then both he and Cecelia handed off hats and outer coats. They filled the air with idle talk, _is so-and-so well_ and _how were the roads_ and _oh Charlie's getting so big!_ and _how are you feeling, my dearest?_ and so on, as they made their way into the house and ensured the door was closed and locked behind them and the servants all dispersing.

It struck Cecelia as bemusing, suddenly, that this house was now so familiar that its grandeur and elegance no longer leapt at her and demanded her attention, when there was something more important to hand.

"Thomas is sulking at his mother," Kate said, in a slightly hushed tone, as they came to the stairway that lead, as Cecelia knew, to Thomas' work-room. "She arrived earlier, and I have no idea why, she's being mysterious and he's being sullen and resentful at everyone except me. Apparently she's making him tell us something he doesn't want to - that's as much as I've been able to gather."

She looked unsurprisingly put out at this, and Cecelia found herself in sympathy. The shared habit of secrecy between Schofield mère et fils was one of their most annoying habits, and she knew James agreed.

"Well that's encouraging," James murmured, glancing at the door. He wore his own slightly put-upon look, the one he used when he was about to say that he had far too many magicians in his life (Cecelia had once pointed out that he only had three, and Lady Sylvia only barely, but James had only given her a patient look and replied that this was precisely what he meant) and that none of them had any sense. "Have they descended to shouting at each other yet?"

Kate gave James a slightly sharp frown. "Thomas and his mother don't shout at each other," she objected. James did not argue with this assessment so much as sidle around it and interpret it as he liked.

"Then it could be worse," he said, philosophically, and before Cecelia could chide him added, "Shall we go in?"

 

Thomas was in one of his amazing sulks. Cecelia considered herself a sort of a connoisseur of sulks, seeing as she'd been subjected first to Oliver's her entire life, and later to Georgy's as well, and now was getting acquainted with the inestimable sulks of a boy of not-quite-one-year, but Thomas' sulks were in a league all their own.

The true strength of it, as far as Cecelia could make out, was that he managed to make the sense of sullen resentment radiate out from his body like heat from an iron stove. It was quite remarkable. He could do with the hint of a narrowed eye, the touch of a slouch and the slightest tightness of his lips what it would have taken Oliver dramatic sighs and pointed comments to achieve, which was announce to the entire world and really anyone within eyeshot that he felt himself _terribly_ ill-used and was in generally terrible temper.

Lady Sylvia, for her part, had an air of slightly irritated vindication to her. She did not get up, her joints being bad, but held out her hands for Cecelia to come and clasp and kissed Cecelia's cheeks in Continental fashion and smiled at James.

"Yes," said Thomas, "lovely, now we're all here, isn't this nice."

"Thomas," Kate and Lady Sylvia both said in unison. Thomas looked between them with an expression of such utter blankness that it was a declaration in and of itself.

"That," he said, "is utterly uncalled for and uncanny and I insist that neither of you ever do it again. _At any rate_ \- " he went on, with a slightly raised voice, before anyone could reply, "now that we all _are_ here, we might as well sort this out."

"Actually," Kate interjected, "I'd rather know what 'this' is before we do any sorting. All I know is that Cecy had a dream where we all died, and now Lady Sylvia is here for reasons that may or may not be connected and it's all terribly urgent and Thomas is feeling extremely guilty about something."

Thomas made a sound of protest.

"You are," Cecelia concurred, "even I can see that, Thomas, and I don't live with you. Isn't he guilty about something, James?"

"Absolutely," James agreed, though more, Cecelia suspected upon glancing at him (he sat reclining in one of Thomas chairs, with the patient look of James In A Room Full of Magicians clear across his face) because he felt the desire to take his frustration with the whole affair out on someone than real agreement.

Cecelia did feel slightly regretful about the whole thing, and particularly at dragging James and Charles this far from home in such a manner, but she was even more certain now that it was necessary than she had been then. She did hate having to ask him to just take it on trust. Well, mostly. Part of her felt it was fair retaliation for _some_ things, but it was really childish to hold a grudge quite that long and besides, he hadn't known her very well then.

"Traitor," Thomas said sourly. "May all your toenails rot off."

" _Thomas_ ," and this time Cecelia joined the chorus of wife and mother, and Thomas turned upon them all an expression of such egregiously betrayed endurance that James actually rolled his eyes.

"Oh stop it," Kate went on, looking her version of stern. "Just tell us, Thomas. It can't possibly be that bad."

"After all, the suspense can't possibly be good for the baby," James added blandly, which actually earned him a frown from Lady Sylvia, and Kate coloured slightly. Thomas glowered at him.

"Oh shut up, James," Thomas growled. "What have I ever done to you?"

"Should I answer that in order of occurrence, or order of severity?" James retorted. "Besides, I know this look. This look means that once you're finished telling me what you've done now, I'm going to want to hit you. I might as well be cutting at you in advance instead, since there are ladies present."

One of the nicest things about the Arrangement, as Cecelia thought of it in her own mind, was that since they'd sorted it out, James and Thomas were at least slightly more direct to each other and didn't seem to be fencing uncomfortably quite as much. James was much less reserved, which Cecelia thought was good for him.

It was also frequently amusing.

"I really resent the way everyone is assuming I've done something," Thomas began. "Especially since it isn't just me."

"You're just the one who should have known better," Lady Sylvia interjected, her voice edged. Thomas glared at his mother.

"We by no means know," he retorted, "that it's even a bad thing, Mother - "

"Will _someone_ ," Kate interrupted, raising her voice and glaring at husband _and_ mother-at-law, "stop talking in circles and tell me what on earth is the matter?"

Thomas looked sour again and then sighed. "We've managed," he said, "to lock ourselves into a fully realized intertwined energetic human matrix."

Cecelia frowned at him as Kate looked blank and James slightly confused. "That can't be right," she said, trying to remember everything she'd read about inter-linked human energies. "The balances required for that sort of thing are far too complex and the ritual - " She tried to think of it. "I mean, each and every possible pairing congruence would have to be accounted for within the division of powers and alignments - "

At which point James interrupted her by groaning slightly and putting his face in his hands. "I knew it," he said. "I _knew_ it. I even thought, then, 'this is almost like a spell' - "

"You did? Why didn't you say anything?" Thomas demanded, looking nettled. Lady Sylvia had also glanced at James, looking thoughtful, but more as if that confirmed something. It struck Cecelia that _perhaps_ they ought to be being a bit more, well - _something -_

"Because I had naively hoped," James replied, "that there was _some_ aspect of life you hadn't managed to get magic tangled up in - "

But then the heel of Kate's shoe struck the arm of her chair with a loud _smack!_ and everyone turned to look at her, startled, even Lady Sylvia. With two spots of colour in her cheeks but a very dignified expression, Kate bent down and slid the shoe back onto her foot.

"If someone," she said, very firmly, "does not stop chattering and explain to me what on earth has got you all so excited, I shall have _deliberate hysterics_." And then she added, "And if anyone says _anything_ about how I ought to have studied this myself, I will have even stronger hysterics and _faint_."

It truly was _all_ that Cecelia could do not to burst out laughing, something which she saw quite clearly Would Not Do. Kate was glowering at Thomas and Lady Sylvia only with that last - Cecelia never having been foolish enough to nag Kate about magic in the first place - but still. It was wiser not to tempt fate when her darling cousin made declarations like that.

Lady Sylvia looked faintly amused, but none of it came out in her voice when she cleared her throat in the subsequent silence to reply. "There are methods," she said, "by which individual persons can be linked to other persons, on the level of fundamental magical energies. This is an area of magic which is a bit . . . . " She seemed to consider.

"Fuzzy," Thomas supplied. "Woolly. Foggy. Misty. Blurry - "

"That will do, Thomas," Lady Sylvia said, and continued, "but yes. It is a difficult area in which to experiment, you understand, because the experimentation must involve people and the results can be . . . .dangerous." She waved a hand. "You've seen, of course, the complications that can arise from a mere shared focus; now imagine the risks of tying your self in a manner much the same, if not considerably deeper, directly to another person. However," she went on, "despite this, from time to time in history people have felt it worth the risk, and done it anyway. Some less ethical magicians have elected to do it to other people and study the results. As a result, we've some information."

"And we've managed to do this with ourselves," Kate said. "By accident." At Lady Sylvia's nod, Kate went on, "All right. What did everyone _else_ Thomas just said mean?"

"That the bond is multifaceted," Lady Sylvia replied, "it extends between all of you equally and equally in each direction, it is wholly stable, entirely balanced, entirely open, and puts all of your personal energies, latent or in use, in harmony."

Something clicked in the back of Cecelia's mind, and knowledge came tumbling down like it did sometimes, as little bits and pieces all aligned, and she blurted out, "But that puts Thomas and myself in fair bid to be the most powerful magicians in the world - _oh!_ " she went on, as another bit of it all unfolded into sense in front of her, so to speak, " _that's_ why we all died!"

The silence that followed this was the silence of four other people trying to work out how on earth to make sense of what she'd just said. Cecelia shook her head, impatient with herself. "In my dream, my vision: we all died. Well, Thomas disappeared out of Calais, but then Kate went mad and died and James fell ill and died of a fever and then I disappeared." She frowned. "It doesn't explain why you died, though, Lady Sylvia."

"Seeing as it started when Thomas disappeared in France," Lady Sylvia replied, "I would imagine simple murder would suffice. Is that why you're here, then?"

"Yes," James replied. "Cecy woke up in the middle of the night insisting she had a vision of us all dying and that we had to come to London immediately to convince Thomas not to go to France." He spread his hands.

"I _did_ ," Cecelia retorted. "And I was right, Thomas did need to tell us things, too. So there."

Thomas was frowning. "That casts rather a new light on things," he said, almost as if to himself. "But there's never been a verified case of prophecy - "

"It's possible she was picking up intentions," Lady Sylvia interrupted, with a frown that looked almost exactly like her son's on her own face (it was really quite distracting). "If someone is acting in malice towards you, or any of you, and is somehow open enough to leave traces - "

"But who would? That's fundamentally clumsy, Mother, it's hard to believe - "

Kate cleared her throat. "Do I have to take off my shoe again?" she demanded. Then she took a deep breath. "This . . . matrix. It isn't hurting us." She looked directly at Thomas when she asked it, which Cecelia felt was fair.

"No," Thomas replied. And the reply was very definite. "I need to refresh my memory on everything we know about them in a general sort of way, but no. It's not intrinsically harmful, since I feel I can presume Cecy doesn't want to pour all vital energy into some container somewhere that she can make use of it later."

Cecelia felt the desire to throw something at him, but contented herself with an aloof, "I should think not." He smiled at her, some of his good humour apparently restored.

"So, there, you see. We are all quite safe."

"Except," James replied, rather taking the comfort out of the words, "that Cecy is having visions of us all dead. Which implies someone is attempting to kill us." He paused. "Again. It's probably your fault, Thomas. It usually is."

Thomas rolled his eyes heavenward, but prudently made no reply.


	6. Chapter 6

There was more discussion, but it did not advance the matter particularly. Cecy described her dream in some detail (which was quite unsettling, Kate had to admit), and Thomas and his mother elaborated on the potential effects of the interlinking they apparently now shared. The latter contained a lot of "possibly"s and "supposedly"s and "potentially"s, but Kate did not trouble to point this out. For the most part, as far as she could settle it in her own mind, it meant that they now shared a heightened awareness of one another, and that if someone with wicked intent got a hold of one of them, he would be able to affect all four as if they shared blood or a focus.

After both the dream and what little they knew for certain had been discussed ad nauseam, it was determined that the only way to make any sort of progress forward would be to cast some exploratory spells and see what they told. They would do that tomorrow, as Cecy and James had to be quite fatigued after their journey. Thomas, in spite of his impatience, agreed to that in the end.

"Kate is my excuse to his Highness at any rate," he subsided. "And I suppose another day is reasonable for a sudden attack of minor illness. Any more, though," he added, thoughtfully, "and we'll have to come up with another explanation, or he'll start enquiring pointedly as to Kate's health and if a physician of his might be able to help."

"I don't see why he's so set on your going anyway," Kate replied, irritably. Truth told, she'd been quite happy for there to be an excuse for Thomas to delay his departure. They'd had a genuine fight over whether or not she would come with him, and she hadn't quite forgiven him for winning yet. "It isn't as if there's any particular _reason_."

Thomas and his mother exchanged a humourless smile. "Oh, the reason is very simple, my dear," her mother-at-law replied. "It's to prove that in the end, he can still tell Thomas what to do. It's been a quiet wrangle between Crown and Schofield for quite a few generations."

"Very quiet," Thomas added in his sardonic way. "Generally, the Crown pretends it leaves us alone to our own amusements for the fun of it but every so often, it feels the need to remind. I suppose I should be grateful it's just a diplomatic bother and relatively near."

Kate didn't actually bother to suppress the somewhat fond smile at his aggrieved tone. Being a peer, and the particular one he was, freed Thomas from most people's being able to tell him what to do; being a magician of such skill as he was mostly did for the rest. That largely only left his mother.

Not for the first time, she wished she'd been able to meet his father, or his older brother. But unfortunately without their being dead, she didn't think she would ever have met Thomas at all, let alone had him fall in love with her.

With that, though, they left the matter.

Which left Kate and Cecy with the wholly different but equally important task of finding Charles, wherever he was, and letting Kate fuss over him.

Mrs Thompson, the housekeeper, was entirely efficient. Thomas was of the firm opinion that this was what they were for, and that while Kate could attend to details like which rooms were appropriate for which guests when if she really wanted to, any housekeeper worth her pay should be able to sort that kind of thing out herself without any supervision needed and come up with a pleasing result. Mrs Thompson was quite good at this, as well as being discreet and loyal very nearly to the death and, Kate sometimes thought, possessed of some kind of very subtle magic that let her anticipate just about anything. And this was why Mrs Thompson was paid very well indeed.

Between Reardon, Walker and Mrs Thompson, James and Cecy were settled in long before the conversation in Thomas' work-room had brought itself to its slightly frustrating close. Mrs Thompson had rightly chosen rooms that were quite near Kate and Thomas' own, and which connected to another that had already been set up as an adequate nursery. Upon Cecy's opening the door, little Charlie looked up and happily pushed himself to his feet and toddled into his mother's arms, or at least into her skirts, and only tripped at the very end to fall into her legs.

Cecy laughed and picked him up, smiling at the nurse (Kate took a moment to recall the name - Amelia? Something like that) and kissing her son on the cheek.

"Walking _already_?" Kate exclaimed, reaching over to touch his soft curls with a finger.

"Only just," Cecy replied. "There's a half-finished letter to you on my desk about it, but then we were coming here. Of course, immediately on discovering he could walk, he started looking for exciting things to fall down from, but James says I shouldn't have expected any less."

The darling child was grinning a happy baby grin and reaching for his mother's hair as if it were an excellent plaything. Kate laughed and held out her arms. "Oh, come here, little one - leave your Mama's hair alone. Pull on mine, it's always a mess anyway, no matter what Reardon tries to do with it."

There was a slight moment of indecision on the baby's face, as if he wasn't quite _sure_ about this at all. Kate could hardly blame him; she had last seen him several months ago, what with one thing and another, and that was a lifetime for a baby. But once she smiled at him, he seemed content to smile back, and then to be fascinated with her pearl-drop earrings, so that she had to laugh and shake her head out of the way of little grasping hands.

"They do look like very pretty toys, don't they? But I'm afraid you can't pull on them." She kissed his cheek and gave him a little hug, and watched Cecy watch both of them with a profoundly fond expression on her face.

Cecy settled into one of the chairs, tucking her legs up beside her. Charles wriggled a little, communicating his desire to get down, so Kate sat on a low settee and set him on the floor. He immediately toddled over to where he had been playing with Amelia (falling twice, but not seeming much concerned about this) and retrieved a little toy dog, whereupon he toddled back to Kate to show it to her, very gravely awaiting her inspection.

"How are _you_ feeling?" Cecy asked, in a rather significant voice, and Kate couldn't help rolling her eyes.

"Don't you start," she replied. "I'm exceptionally well, as long as I eat a piece of fruit every morning as soon as I wake up, which I do, and I do not need to be coddled. I swear, women have babies all the time without people turning them into porcelain figurines that need to be kept in wool."

"Yes, but you're not just anyone," Cesy began with an attempt at a serious face, but Kate mock-glowered at her.

"Don't try that," she warned. "Thomas has already tried that and I won't have it."

Cecy laughed. "They do get very flustered over these things, don't they? Although I admit, by the time I was as far along as you, I was grateful for a little fuss."

"Honestly, the only thing wrong is that for some reason I'm very distractible," Kate said. "I keep winding up staring happily off into thin air and missing what people are saying around me, and sometimes it's terribly hard to keep track of conversations. At least, ones I don't want to listen to anyway."

"It's a good thing I love you as much as I do, Kate," Cecy said, very seriously, "or I should be profoundly irritated with you right now." It was Kate's turn to laugh.

"Just watch," she said, "my baby will be the one to scream and scream for hours, and never be pleased with anything."

Cecy looked thoughtful. "If so, it's sure to be Thomas' fault," she reflected.

"Isn't it always Thomas' fault?" Kate replied, and they both laughed. Then, as if the joke had brought her thoughts round the full circle, Cecy's face turned serious.

"How do you feel about this?" she asked, tentatively.

"About what?" Kate asked, absently, as Charlie brought her another toy for her consideration, this time a soft sheep whose ears bore signs of a baby's teething. "Oh," she said, sitting up. She was about to say that it didn't matter, but remembered at the last minute that it was a great deal harder to lie to Cecy than anyone else, and sighed.

"I really don't know yet, Cecy. I don't think I feel anything about it yet, because I'm not sure what it means. Honestly," she gave a little laugh, "the only thing I'm at all certain about is that I'm _not_ certain I'm happy Lady Sylvia knows about, well, _us_ , in general."

It sometimes felt odd to still refer to Thomas' mother that way, but Kate was _not_ comfortable removing the honourific yet. Cecy frowned in thought.

"You can't think she'll disapprove?" she asked, and Kate shook her head.

"No, it isn't that, I'm just not sure I like the idea that it's even being presented for her to approve or disapprove of. Or anyone to. It's quite silly, I'm sure, but there are so many things about me that people will have opinions of, these days, that I feel a little possessive of the things that are truly important." She sighed. "I don't know that it makes any sense."

"No, I think I understand," Cecy said, reaching over to catch her hand and squeeze it. Kate glanced at Charles' nurse (who was studiously pretending to be deaf and entirely engrossed in agreeing with the baby about the deep fascination of coloured blocks) and sighed.

"At any rate," she said, "I can't imagine I'll feel anything particularly bad about it, even when I do know what I feel. I'm already more than tangled up in Thomas' magic, all things considered," and here she laid a hand on her lower abdomen as a side-comment, "that I can't imagine it being a terrible thing to be tangled up in yours as well. What about you?"

Cecy looked slightly guilty. "Honestly? I think I'm a bit pleased, or maybe relieved," she replied. "I mean, one of the things it means is I think it will be much easier to keep track of everyone and whether or not you're all right. Which sounds such a terribly James thing to say, don't you think? But it's true."

Kate smiled at her. "Well, I suppose a little influence is only natural - but really, Cecy, what do you expect us to do? It seems very much that any time any of us gets in trouble, it's all four of us together already."

"Yes, well, this is just a little extra surety that it always will be all four of us," Cecy replied. "And I don't think I mind that at all."

"Or the idea of being one of the two most powerful magicians in the world?" Kate teased, remembering that little detail of Cecy's outburst. She laughed aloud when Cecy turned pink.

The laughter caught her son's attention, and Charles wandered over, block in hand, obviously wanting to know what was so funny and, whatever it was, whether it was actually more funny than he himself, which of course it could not be. Cecy gathered him onto her lap. "Do you think the boys have finished being sarcastic at each other yet?" she wondered.

"Oh, we should give them a few more minutes," Kate replied. "They should be finished by dinner, though."


	7. Chapter 7

That she had expected something like this did not make it any more pleasant when her jailer woke her out of a sound sleep by dragging her off her bed by the hair.

He would pay for that.

When he let her go, it was with a final twist, and she knew he came away with a chunk of her hair. It hurt. And at that she stared up at him, sprawled as she was on the floor. Hair in her face, shift and petticoats she slept in all awry, the witch stared at her jailer and thought that surely even he could not be that stupid, that impatient.

The gleam of disgust and smug triumph in his face, though, told her that he could. He hadn't always been, she knew that. He'd been subtle and careful once, powerful and neither too cautious nor too reckless. Canny, cunning, you could have called him any number of things. But time (and a witch knows this, better than anyone) erodes all things, and she gauged him anew from her floor, lowering her gaze to his boots in feigned distress. She gauged him, and knew that, yes, he was this reckless now. Anger was an acid that ate away at the gears of the well-ordered mind.

"And what," she said, "is the meaning of this?" She tried to gauge her tone carefully, so that it sounded as if she were attempting to rally herself in the face of disquieting apprehension. In truth, she knew she wouldn't die yet. He still needed her for the potions that kept him alive; his bought-and-paid-for wizards couldn't give him that.

Her jailer was breathing heavily, like a snorting, panting horse. "Where is the glass, witch?" he demanded, harsh and low; at the words, for the first time, she felt a tremor of unease.

"What glass?" she said, summoning up blank incomprehension, looking up at him and pushing herself up off the floor. She settled her clothes, such as they were, into better array and drew herself up. "What are you doing, dragging me out of bed in the middle of the ni -"

"The glass," he interrupted her with a dreadful implacability, "made of the sand from your useless spell, witch. Give it to me. _Now_."

It took a lot to keep her face blank. The bottom had dropped out of her stomach, and instead there was only a cold kind of terror all through her. But she made herself shoot him a bewildered, angry look, and went to the box she had moved it to. It was small, enamelled wood and smelling of cedar. Warily, she handed it to him - without the bloodied cloth. That, she left in the box. Testing. Carefully.

She was never so relieved in the whole of her life when he threw the glass down and ground the solid heel of his boot into the fragments. It made her light-headed, it made her want to sit down on the ground and cry with relief. Instead, she gave him her bewildered look again, and demand in an icy voice, "Exactly _what_ was the point of that?"

Her jailer snapped his fingers. "That for your mumblings," he informed her, coolly. "Your hocus pocus is no longer needed. Assuming there was anything to it at all, which I doubt."

"I told you - " she began, but he cut her off.

"You're a liar, witch," he said, wholly calm. "Known to be. And you're that woman's daughter. This," and he held up the hair he'd torn off her, "will give me all I need from you, besides the service that keeps you alive."

"You've taken leave of your senses," she replied, drawing herself up.

When he hit her, it took her entirely by surprise. He wasn't the kind of man given to losing hold on his temper. Her hand went to the stinging place where his had struck, and the wide-eyed look she turned on him wasn't feigned at all.

"Mind your mouth, witch," he said. "A servant will be by for what you owe." And then he turned and left.

She sat down on the bed. Her face stung, badly; her mind ran, trying to catch up, trying to make sense of what had just happened, to sort out what it meant. The shattered glass on the floor sparkled at her in the light of the lamp her jailer had left - out of indifference to that sort of thing, she thought, more than any consideration, however twisted - and that jogged her mind enough that she got up and took the cloth out of the box. She built up the fire and, when it was hot and lively again, threw the bloodstained linen on.

Under her breath, she murmured the words that would make the spell dissipate slowly.

Her jailer must have found another wizard. That was the sort of thing a wizard would think would work. She'd thought she'd been unobserved, that he hadn't noticed the glass at all when she'd set the spell, but if he'd understood what it was, what the whole thing really meant, he would never have broken it. He would have carried it with him, or managed to bind it to himself (it was easy enough) and then she and his intended target would both have been bound to _him_. Inescapably.

No, it had to be that he had found another wizard, a stronger or better one. A wizard would think that breaking the central object of a spell would end it, because a wizard would think that a spell _had_ a central object. A wizard would think it was that simple. Their spells were crystalline structures, shattered with one word. Witchcraft was the webbed roots of the thicket, the vast underground life of the aspen-grove. Just because you cut down a tree or uprooted one end didn't mean that the spell itself died.

It would die now. It had to. That was too close, and the shattered bits of glass and tiny shards could go anywhere: even if she swept it up as carefully as she could, she would not get it all. Some even now clung to the heel of her jailer's boot, and that was far too great a risk. No, it would die now - but slowly. Traces would remain. She could have ended it clean, and all it would have taken was more of her strength, but this way -

The hair her jailer had taken could only be meant for a direct attack. With her own spell intact it would have been futile and stupid: her spell wouldn't _let_ Thomas Schofield die until he fulfilled its charge and came to her, here in France; Schofield was untouchable, and he was the only one vulnerable that way. Now, with that inadvertent protection gone -

The witch shuddered, just a touch. She did not like her future chances, if her jailer succeeded with this.

She went to the case on the mantel and measured out more of the potion in it. It was dangerous: it shared that with the laudanum her jailer thought it was, too. Used too often, and, well -

But she needed to see, and to know. She didn't dare send a warning, or try another spell. She could only hope that his own till-now-ignored connections could keep him alive. The dowager marchioness was an excellent magician in and of herself, but it would not be she who would get what little warning there could possibly be -

The witch laid herself down in her bed again, to spend the day in a dreaming stupor.


	8. Chapter 8

By breakfast the next morning, fraught tempers were a little recovered. Lady Sylvia, Cecelia noted, was even kind enough not to remark on that or upon why, which Cecelia felt was not _entirely_ to be taken for granted. They were all, if a little sleepy and bleary eyed, rather more sanguine about present circumstances and the future.

Amusingly enough, discussion of the matrix-bond had seemed to unnerve and unsettle Thomas the most. James was exasperated, certainly, but sometimes it seemed he was simply exasperated with magic in general and how he kept finding himself in situations that got him neck-deep in it, despite never having more expertise than his oft-mentioned studies at Oxford left him. He had grumbled and given vent to his irritation, but the more that Thomas seemed concerned, the more James withdrew his annoyance, until at last when Thomas managed to articulate his deep concern for the potential danger this could put the other three of them in, should another enemy of some sort take aim at him, it was James who had replied, "As opposed to . . . what, exactly? Because obviously there's nothing _else_ that would put us in danger, if someone decided the world would be better off without you." James had then paused. "Again."

Kate, who had been entirely composed throughout the whole discussion, simply said, "A threat to you _is_ a threat to me, Thomas. And it is the same with Cecy, and with James. It just seems that concrete circumstances are now acknowledging what we always knew to be true."

Cecelia, feeling that at that point a little levity was required, had put on her best expression of innocent interest, and enquired, "From which quarter do you think attack is _likely_ to come, Thomas? _This_ time?" and he had thrown a small ornamental cushion at her. From there, entirely as she had intended, things had devolved: James felt the need to defend her, Thomas displayed his usual ability to wriggle out of anything and, eventually, the entire thing was diverted to affection.

Slightly exhausting affection, but Cecelia wasn't about to complain. The advantage of genuinely loving one another was that there was never any investment in continuing a disagreement or unpleasantness past necessity.

And now, the morning. It had been decided at the breakfast table that the best way to proceed would be to, as Thomas put it, get all four of them to sit still while Lady Sylvia set up spells to poke, prod and generally observe what the connexion seemed to be _doing_. That, it was felt, might give them somewhere to start on the question of Cecelia's own dream-vision, as well as telling them all sorts of other useful things.

Kate looked positively curious, Cecelia was fascinated by all the potential for discovery, James had only a small amount of the irritability that served him in place of nervousness, and Thomas was hiding his own curiosity under his best attitude of resignation.

The work-room was too small; instead, Kate had the servants roll up the carpets and rugs in the Spring Parlour and remove all of the furniture but four small but rather comfortable chairs, two low tables and a settee for Lady Sylvia. While Thomas' workroom was quite a reasonable space and well-appointed, it had less sunlight and for this they needed a great deal larger stretch of floor.

Lady Sylvia directed, corrected and criticized, while Thomas and Cecelia (with, in the case of Thomas, some acid returns to his mother's comments) drew out the circle and the star within it, and Kate (due to the steadying influences of a woman bearing a child on particular kinds of magic) laid out the different sorts of incense and tokens at the various four quarters. Lady Sylvia and Thomas had a brief argument about whether or not to invoke the Guardians as archangels or as something else, which Thomas actually won in favour of the archangels, and James wandered about making fussy little adjustments and frowning.

Cecelia enjoyed, sometimes, the incongruous look of magic. She had never mentioned it either to Thomas or to any of her teachers, either continuous or merely temporary, but the dichotomy of the arcane and impressive-looking symbols and tokens and the purely ordinary and slightly untidy look of the four chairs haphazardly set so that they were all within five-sided heart of the star tickled her fancy. It was not, generally, what people imagined. Add to that one of the many Marys (Thomas had once insisted that Mrs Thompson hired girls named "Mary" by preference because it made it easier to call for one of them) bringing in a tray of tea and scones to fortify them all, and not giving the arrangement more than the most cursory glance, and it was all quite the picture.

"Very well," Lady Sylvia said, as Kate shooed this particular Mary away and they all helped themselves to the food and drink. "When this is finished," she gestured with her teacup, "you four will go and sit and try not to fidget too much. Or talk too much, for that matter. It should not take above a half-hour, but it is an engrossing set of spells."

"How will we be able to see what's been determined?" Kate asked, peering at the other table. There was a very simple frame set on it, strung with fine, undyed thread. "Will the results be recorded on that somehow?"

"Well-spotted," Thomas murmured, and Lady Sylvia nodded.

"There's a particular pattern of snarling, snapping and otherwise disordering of the threads that will occur. It won't tell us very detailed specifics," she noted. "But it will give us generalities, which we may then investigate in due course, if we choose."

"This is really quite a fascinating opportunity," Cecelia noted, considering it all. "It's really too bad we can't tell the College of Magicians without considerable scandal."

She found herself once more the centre of four slightly bemused attentions. James shook his head and muttered something under his breath that she would have to extract from him later, but Thomas' bemusement settled into consideration. "A posthumous publication, perhaps," he mused. "You're right, though, that's quite irritating."

Kate and James exchanged looks this time - long-suffering, patient looks. Cecelia saw Lady Sylvia's lips twitch, but the smile did not quite manifest. "If we could move along, children," she suggested instead, dryly, pouring herself more tea.

 

It felt quite odd to just sit, as comfortably as she could manage, while someone _else_ set spells all around and on her. It wasn't something that had really happened before; generally, when someone else was setting spells on her, it was _not_ a good thing. It made Cecelia slightly fidgety, playing with one of the ribbons that trimmed her dress, until Kate reached over and took her hand.

And gave her a knowing look. Cecelia squeezed Kate's hand in turn and attempted to turn a less anxious face to the whole endeavour.

It had not struck her to enquire as to what the spell might feel like; in the end, it turned out that the work itself was conducive to calm and almost dreamy contemplation. As Lady Sylvia's voice took up a low, murmuring chant from which Cecelia could pick the occasional word, and the tingle of magic settled across Cecelia's skin, she found herself caught up in what strongly resembled the idle daydreaming of a warm and lazy afternoon in summer when one is lying on some sort of couch watching birds out one's window. It felt quite pleasant, actually, to sit and hold Kate's hand, not trying at all to think of anything much. She began to wonder if she ought to ask Amelia about the state of Charles' wardrobe, or see if Aunt Elizabeth would enjoy a visit. She contemplated visiting her father for Christmas this year. She found herself pondering whether or not Kate's baby would be a girl, and if so, what a Season might be like for her (little Marchioness-to-be), what Seasons might look like sixteen years from now.

Cecelia was in the midst of wondering, dreamily, whether to propose they take another Grand Tour sometime in the future (this one hopefully unmarred by maniacs attempting to make sacrificial lambs the sacred King of All Europe in order to change the face of magic forever), when the whole world gave a nauseous and sickening lurch, everything went black, and they were, all four of them flung to the ground.

The heartbeat it took for everything to right itself, for the darkness to recede from Cecelia's vision, felt appallingly long. Not, she thought distantly, an eternity - she'd felt things that felt like an eternity - but far longer than the breath-and-a-half that was all she had time to take before she was pushing herself to her feet, tripping slightly on the hem of her dress, and shaking her head to clear it.

James was already standing, his reflexive action still that of a soldier. He had been thrown out of the circle, and was helping Lady Sylvia to her feet where she had slid off the settee. Cecelia looked at him and saw no blood nor anything to concern her, felt nothing of herself, and was already turning to Thomas and Kate when Kate's cry of _Thomas!_ rang out.

Thomas lay upon the floor; he had convulsed, clearly, and was still shuddering; his hands were pressed to his head, fingers curled closed, and he was white, white as a sheet. Kate bent over him, and looked first to Cecelia and then to Lady Sylvia and then down again and repeated, "Thomas - "

Cecelia recognized it, in the moment of clear shock: Thomas was shuddering, yes, but just, just around the hiss of breath she could make the shape of words, of _alexo_ and - "He's being attacked," she said, the sound of her own voice hollow. "He's under attack, someone's - "

"Help me." Lady Sylvia's voice was like the sound of a great tree finally snapping and cracking to the ground. She was speaking to James, but Cecelia heard it and, her mind already casting about for something to do that would not make matters worse, she obeyed as well, so that between them she and James nearly carried the old woman to the disaster of the circle.

"Get rid of those," Lady Sylvia snapped at James, pointing to the various bits of incense and earth, "I don't care if you break the window and throw them out. Do it _now_!"

If James had meant to argue or ask anything, the last word made it impossible; so close, Cecelia felt the light, harsh ring of the spell that was in it, and James moved with alacrity.

"What is it - " Kate began, but Lady Sylvia said, " _Hush_ ," in a terrible, terrible voice and Kate fell utterly silent. Lady Sylvia bent her head close to Thomas, one hand resting on his shoulder, those occasional hissed words still in echo - _alexos, haimatos_ , those were the only ones that Cecelia could clearly decipher -

Lady Sylvia, for just the briefest pause, looked almost stricken; then, so fast that Cecelia could not be certain she'd seen the look before, her face turned grim. "You," she said, "girl. Ground yourself. Now."

It was an entirely different voice that Cecelia had ever heard from her. It was harsher and harder, and somehow rougher as well, less refined than the lady of Paris she knew. It was also impossible to disobey, and she found herself trying at once to do exactly that, as Lady Sylvia also snapped, "Tarleton, come here _now_ \- girl, ground through him, and take his hand."

James knelt and Cecelia took hold of his hand, fingers sliding entwined with his, with some relief. Kate only stared, distraught, face pale and hair askew, until Lady Sylvia grabbed hold of her wrist and of Cecelia's other hand and pushed them together. "Stay there," she said, taking Kate's other hand and putting it over one of Thomas'; Cecelia squeezed Kate's fingers in some sort of reassurance, but she didn't think that Kate noticed.

Thomas had stopped hissing; now there only rasped his breath. To Cecelia's shock, Lady Sylvia put her own thumb to her mouth and bit down _hard_ , so hard that when her hand came away there was blood on her thumb. She made a sign on Thomas forehead with it and laid a hand on his shoulder, muttering in what did not, to Cecelia, sound like Greek. Then Lady Sylvia put her bleeding thumb to her mouth again and after a pause, spat what looked like blood away from them all, onto the chalk of the circle.

Then, like the sound of God's judgement descending, she said _"Fiat!"_ and it echoed in Cecelia's head like cannon-fire. And struck her almost like a shot, as something tried, seemed to try to pull her off-balance, to pull her free from the grounding she had managed, but she spat a curse James would be _sure_ to chide her for, normally, tightened her hold on both hands in hers and threw back her entire will (leaning, it felt like, against James and clinging to Kate) in a snarl of _No_.

Something snapped. The echoes died. Cecelia gasped like she'd been underwater, and saw that Thomas had finished his collapse, body loose instead of twisted in its little knot, and there were tears on Kate's face.

Lady Sylvia looked grey. Before Cecelia, James or Kate could so much as open their mouths, she said, in a quiet, calm voice, "It worked. He will be all right. A crude counterspell, but it was a crude attack, and crudity lacks only style, not power." She stared down at her bleeding thumb as if seeing it for the first time. "Cecelia, child, go and tell one of those maids in the doorway to bring me a bandage."

Cecelia looked up, feeling slow and stupid, and saw that there were in fact a number of women in the doorway, all of them wide-eyed and frightened looking. "You can tell them it's all right," Lady Sylvia went on distantly. "There's no residue or danger anymore. Ask one of them to come and help me up and back to the settee, there's a dear. We'll sort this out in a moment."


	9. Chapter 9

Kate had always used hysterics as a final threat, in part because she really had no patience with them and viewed them as (to be honest) things women like Georgiana did, because they were too soppy to do anything else when disaster threatened. She had been upset, livid, terrified, anxious, and many other things, but she prided herself she had not actually been hysterical.

If Mrs Thompson hadn't been as efficient and excellent a woman and servant as she was, however, Kate might have fallen to pieces right there in the Spring Room and some of the pieces might have gotten lost and required a lot of help to put back together.

It was, in large part, because her mother-at-law behaved in so calm and matter-of-fact a manner about it, about everything, once Thomas' rictus had eased and he had traded seizing for unconscious. It was unconscionable. Thomas had stopped his foetal shivering, it was true, but he remained wholly unconscious and his heartbeat, when Kate managed to check, was extremely rapid. Kate's own head pounded like some regimental drum, everything had exploded, Cecy looked like someone had hit her in the back of the head with a board, and James' face carried the utterly blank expression of a man who was trying very hard to make it seem as if he was quite calm.

Someone had attacked them. Right here. _In her own house_. It was unsupportable, and some part of Kate rose in livid wrath and found that it had no target, no idea where to turn, and that she could not, simply _could not_ turn on beloved friend, or mother-at-law, or even the first few fluttering, slightly timid of her own staff of servants who trickled in the door. And so, like a wave striking a breakwater, everything came back on Kate herself, and she found that she was shaking and on the borderline of wholly irrational tears. Or laughter. Or something.

And Lady Sylvia, she simply accepted help back to her settee, retrieved her dropped walking-stick and began giving orders (orders, part of Kate was conscious, Kate herself should have been giving) to clean up the mess, giving utter lies as explanations, and calling in one of the men to carry Thomas to bed. While Kate herself had no idea what had just happened. In the end, it brought her to the very edge of explosion.

Instead, Mrs Thompson at some point materialized and, like a sergeant restoring order to a field of battle, made things actually happen.

The excuses that had seemed insufferable and thin coming from Lady Sylvia donned the appearance of natural truth as Mrs Thompson calmly told the world at large that clearly, there had been a minor magical mishap, happened all the time, what on earth were the lot of you staring at didn't you realize you were serving in a master wizard's house by now? Under the every-day crack of her voice, brandy was produced from somewhere and everyone given a drink; at Lady Sylvia's encouraging nod, Kate took some, James downed his in a single swallow, and Cecy looked utterly absent and distracted, as if she were in another world.

Thomas _was_ taken to bed; the mess was cleaned up, properly, with salt-water to take the chalk off the floor. Somehow Kate found herself handed over to Reardon, who insisted that she change clothes. Until then, Kate had not realized that her dress was marked up with incense and chalk, and that she'd torn it in several places. Walker somehow managed to take command of both Cecy _and_ James, and the next time Kate saw either of them (herself changed and pressed with some sort of sweet-tasting posset from the kitchen which she was assured would be good for the baby), it was outside Thomas' room and James for some strange reason had Charles in tow.

"Amelia says he started screaming and just wouldn't stop," Cecy explained when she caught Kate's blink. "He was certainly crying when we got to them, and stopped the moment James picked him up."

"And started again the moment I put him down," James added, "which is why he's here."

"Not only that," Cecy went on, "as far as we could determine from what Amelia told us, Charlie started screaming at the exact moment of the attack on Thomas."

James, Kate noted, did not look pleased. She herself felt rather distant, and merely nodded, before saying, "I'm going in to see Thomas." It seemed the thing to say. Then she put her hand on the door and went in.

Her mother-at-law was seated on a chair by the bedside, both hands resting on her stick. It was very nearly a portrait: you could entitle it, Kate thought giddily, "At Bedside" or something equally inane.

"He'll be fine," said Lady Sylvia, "indeed, he should be awake relatively soon. Come in and close the door. We appear to have a problem."

 

James thought, for a moment, that Kate was going to scream. Instead, she crossed the space from door to Thomas bed on the opposite side from Lady Sylvia and ignored propriety entirely by sitting on it and reaching over to lay a hand aside Thomas' face and observe his breathing.

Charles tugged at James' sleeve and he bent down to pick his son up again. At Lady Sylvia's enquiring look, Cecy repeated what they'd told Kate already and added, "Charlie's _not_ prone to upset, so it was really very unusual."

"What happened?" Kate said abruptly, turning where she sat on the bed, both of her feet pulled up and tucked up beside her. And James could _see_ the answer coming, because mother and son were very much the same in many ways and, in the end, both mother and son dealt with particular kinds of distress in the same way. James could _also_ see the snapping and the explosion that would come from Kate if Lady Sylvia actually _said_ what James knew she was going to say.

Then, with his eyes still closed, Thomas said, "Someone tried to kill me, Kate. I would have thought that was obvious."

James wanted to hit him, quite badly. It was an obnoxiously familiar feeling; he was sure there was something at least faintly amiss at wanting to hit someone one loved as often as he wanted to hit Thomas, particularly given the proportion of those times that arrived when Thomas was laid out flat for some reason or another, but there you were. He mastered the impulse, as Kate sagged ever so slightly in relief and turned to look to Thomas again. Thomas went on, "Mother, if you would be kind enough to get rid of the light, I may consider opening my eyes. May. On the other hand I may consider cutting my head off instead and save my attacker the trouble."

"You've had headaches before," Lady Sylvia replied, without a great deal of apparent sympathy. "Indeed, I've known you to attend appointments with his Highness with a pounding head." She did, however, nod and gesture with one hand to James to draw the drapes and to turn down the lamps.

"Yes, but then I'd had the chance to earn it through enjoyment," Thomas grumbled, as he sat up and caught Kate throwing her arms around his shoulders and burying her head in his neck. "Who the _Hell_ would be able to pull on the bonds of blood with me, Mother? Everyone living I share blood with is in this room, and one of them's still rather more a hope than a reality."

Lady Sylvia waved a hand in dismissal. "Bedrick and Miranda both would have had plenty of opportunity to gather mementoes from you or from Edward, Thomas, and who knows whence from there?"

"True." Thomas looked disgruntled. Cecy went into the adjoining room and came back with a stool and a chair, for herself and for James; Charles was not particularly heavy, but it had been a trying day, and James found himself more tired than he ought to be. That implied that at some point during the fiasco, Cecy (or Lady Sylvia, but he suspected Cecy) had been able to draw from him.

In fact, he suspected that was all that had turned the attack, but wasn't going to be the first to say it aloud. At least, not yet. If it was so, it certainly went a long way to removing any of his reservations about the situation.

"What," Kate repeated, her arms still around Thomas' shoulders, one of his hands resting over her left wrist, " _happened_?"

"Someone tried to use the strongest sort of sympathetic magic to kill Thomas," Cecy provided, sitting down in her bright-eyed-but-composed way on the chair and reaching up to take Charles from James and settle the baby on her lap. Their son had a fist shoved almost entirely in his mouth and immediately reached up to take a hold of his mother's locket, making a short, unintelligible comment on the world. "I _knew_ I heard you saying _haimatos_ ," she added, to Thomas directly.

"I oughtn't to have had the time nor ability," Thomas said, quite seriously. He rearranged himself and Kate slightly, so that Kate rested more comfortably within the crook of _his_ arm. She stared straight ahead with a silent fury that did not speak well for whoever they caught. James found himself quite in agreement. "I think we can put that down to the matrix, happily. That particular spell is _not_ designed to give the target any time to counter, unless he is prepared for the attack in the first place. Which I was not." He made the last admission airily, Thomas' way of deflecting attention away from a detail he would prefer nobody caught or paid much attention to.

"And it would have succeeded regardless," Lady Sylvia said, entirely calm, "had you been alone, had _I_ not been there, had Kate not been with child, or had any other circumstance of the moment been different. The number of circumstances which conspired together to save your life, my dear boy, strain credulity."

"How do you mean?" Kate asked, sharply. "What does the baby have to do with anything? What actually _happened?_ " One hand went protectively to her lower abdomen, and it struck James that perhaps it would be worth-while to drop a hint in Thomas' ear that he should give up on attempting to get Kate to learn the basics first (as it was clearer than anything by now that Kate did not _wish_ to be a practical magician) and simply leap into the more complicated theory.

It might save them all from being killed in their sleep on the day she lost patience with being lost.

Thomas squeezed her shoulder gently and said, "Sympathetic magic that relies on bonds of blood is one of the oldest, most powerful, and most difficult to do anything against. It's why, historically, very few families of magicians have fallen out, and when they have it's usually been one member murdering all the others in their beds before anyone knew there was a problem." He smiled humourlessly. "Otherwise, you'd be obliged to walk around in a little protective bubble for the rest of your life, and that makes doing anything else rather difficult. Someone has managed to get something that allowed them to try it on me. Most people don't _know_ the counters to that sort of thing; even fewer people know how to improvise on them; usually there isn't time to even try; and even when there is, it usually kills the intervening magician - " and here he was giving his mother a steady look, " - because the energies required are so great and so turbulent."

Lady Sylvia returned her son's gaze without turning a hair, and continued, "In this case, because Cecy is a magician and bound to Thomas and thus, through Thomas and through Kate and Thomas' unborn - " she gestured to Kate, who still had her hand over her belly like a shield, "and because James is an excellently grounded example of an Earth-Alignment, I was able to ground the energies through him via her. Because of that same unborn, between it and myself we provided sufficient . . . " she paused. "Call it blood-alignment, the theory around these things is very obscure and not an inconsiderable amount of the, ah, _white_ magic aspect, shall we call it, consists of things I discovered at necessity. Sadly," she noted, "most of those interested in this area have been of the Tanistry turn of mind, and others have decided that the entire field is dangerously tainted. At any rate, as I said, the level of fortunate coincidence is overwhelming."

"You think something more complex is afoot," Cecy noted, leaning forward and absently detangling Charles hand from the slender chain about her neck, with a murmured, "No, darling, be careful with Mama's necklace."

James, however, had turned his attention to Thomas. He had known Thomas for longer than either of their girls, considerably, and also in considerably more . . . violent . . . situations. There were particular kinds of lies which Thomas was known to attempt - lies of omission or misdirection, rather than outright falsehood - which James was much better at detecting, and at the moment, he quite certainly detected them. He did not know Lady Sylvia quite so well, but he suspected they were alike in this as well. And both of them far too fond of secrecy.

Given the rest of the information that he had, knowledge which he was quite certain even Kate would not have let alone Cecy, James had a fairly solid guess as to what it was that held Thomas' tongue when he so evidently (to James, if no one else) had something on his mind. The reticence annoyed James in a way that was not entirely rational (there were reasons, after all, and he even understood them), but which combined with the lingering fear and general anger to mean that he said, aloud if quietly, "D— would have had opportunity to obtain the necessary effects from either Miranda Tanistry _or_ Sir Hillary Bedrick."

He became the object of four sharp gazes, two accusing and two puzzled. He ignored all but Thomas', which he answered very simply with what was, if not entirely what drove him to speak, certainly what _ought_ to have, irritation or no.

Because it struck him, and made his blood suddenly cool and sluggish, that if Lady Sylvia could use her blood ties to Thomas and, now, to Kate, to ground magic through Cecy and himself, that the small, helpless creature on Cecy's lap, playing with one of her ribbons and attempting to chew his own fist off, was vulnerable as well. Because his son had _screamed_ when Thomas had been attacked.

So James looked at Thomas, and then very deliberately shifted his gaze to Charles (whom he himself had perhaps accidentally tied to this, at naming), and said, "I think we've gone past the point where the past can just be let lie, Schofield."

Thomas could be terribly obtuse when he set his mind to it, but in this instance, he did not; he followed James thought and put a hand over his face. "Damn you, Tarleton," he said, with a sigh that anyone who knew him knew was defeat. "Why the Hell do you always have to be right when it's most unpleasant?"

Kate, from where she still lay, listening with that intensity that anyone who knew _her_ knew meant that absolutely not the slightest detail was escaping her notice or her memory, said, "I am not going to threaten anything. But for the love of _God_ I would appreciate it if we could stop speaking in riddles - Thomas _what_ are you _doing?_ "

Thomas was pushing himself up off the bed, and replied, very firmly, "I am not having this conversation lying in bed like an invalid, and I'm not having it sober." He muttered under his breath something that apparently even Kate couldn't catch, but Kate was looking to her mother-at-law with an expression of profound concern.

Lady Sylvia looked thoughtful in her silence, narrowing her eyes at her son, but nodded. "I think you can risk a short walk to somewhere a little more comfortable to sit and talk," she agreed, as if granting permission.

 

Cecelia had not missed James' significant look towards their son. The thought of what that meant had made her tighten her arms around Charles and to forget to chide him for pulling at her broach.

Kate had the simmering look of some unminded pot, too tightly lidded, that would explode at any moment; Thomas looked dire and hateful; James stubborn; and Lady Sylvia was a mystery.

They settled, in the end, in the library. The housekeeper herself brought tea, with brandy set to the side to allow people to add it as they wished: she, Cecy thought, recognized the signs of high magical disaster, although she did not appear to allow it to unsettle her. She also provided sweets and milk for Charles, for which Cecy was grateful, and Kate poured for everyone.

In Thomas case, he had a small drop of tea with his brandy, and set about drinking it with the air of a man who wanted to put a significant bulwark of alcohol between himself and whatever was going to come next.

"As much as I'm sure the idea of a long story is not appealing," Lady Sylvia began, when they had settled and Charles was on the floor eating one of his biscuits and spreading crumbs about, "this one must begin a very long time ago, and with a ring."

"That sounds ominous," Kate observed, letting off a tiny amount of the steam built up by her simmer with the edge in her voice.

"It should," Thomas replied shortly. "Nothing good ever starts with a ring."


	10. Chapter 10

They were wrong, but their error still led them in the right direction, so the witch didn't care. In her dreaming, drowsing state, she did not hear words nor see images of the people she watched, but she knew. The bits of them, the pieces of mind and soul and truths in time that hovered around them: those she perceived, and from those, with long practice, she pieced together intuition, knowledge.

She knew this story, of course. She had heard it, she thought, with better flourish than it would be told now. Like all such stories, it began with, _Once._

But dowager marchioness' voice was what she heard, spinning up and spinning itself around, and the lady said, "I shall make this as brief as I can. The Schofield title is, as you know, extremely old, and as many extremely old titles were it was granted on the heels of a military victory for the original incumbent. In the course of this victory, the first Marquis obtained a rather peculiar ring. It took him some time to determine its powers, but eventually he managed to ascertain that when he wore the ring, other people found him almost irresistibly persuasive. It seemed that whoever wore it could, so to speak, not only drag pigs willingly to water, but make them drink, swim, and perform the ballet if he really wanted them to - as long as he remained near them.

"The ring inevitably led the family to the brink of disaster, and eventually the widow of the last adult Marquis and guardian of the infant presumptive took the ring to a wizard with whom she was acquainted and asked him to destroy it.

"He informed her that this was impossible: the ancient arts that had made it were far too powerful and complex for him. He explained to her that, rather than destroy it, he could _hide_ it. The trick was that in order to make it impossible to find, he would have to bind the secret to something - in this case, to her bloodline. So long as her grandchildren, and so on, maintained their title, nobody would be able to uncover it but them. The end of the line would mean the end of the enchantment, and then the ring could be found by anyone who knew where to look.

"Accepting that this was the best that she would find, the marchioness had him set the spell and then physically hid the ring as well. She told no one where it was hidden. When her son married, she told her daughter-at-law of the existence of the thing, that it was profoundly dangerous and would bring ruin on the house if found, that she was _never_ to speak of it to her husband, and that the daughter-at-law herself would, in turn, tell _her_ daughter at law.

"The magician was quite clever. Only the Marquis and his direct heir, at any time, could be used to find the ring. Only the Marchioness was ever told that it existed, and even she did not tell where.

"No, Kate, I never passed the story down to you. There is no longer any need for it. Let me continue.

"I told you I went to school with Miranda Tanistry. She was an accomplished but not inspirational young lady, at first. Something happened, however, and she became obsessed with power, and quite certain that power could only be obtained, at least by a woman, through means of manipulating and, in the end, enslaving men. And that in turn _this_ could only be managed by the young and the beautiful. It made her . . . unpleasant. Nothing that could be proved, of course, and there is certainly no law against either dedicating oneself to one's studies, as she did, nor in finding ways to avoid appearing one's age. Not unless one is caught at the more unsavoury practices, and she was not.

"I married Thomas' and Edward's father quite young, and Edward was born in short order. Thomas took his own sweet time, so there was quite a difference between them. Miranda, meanwhile, reinvented herself. Some poor child, somewhere, had all her youth stolen up and Miranda took up the pretense that she was her own niece. She had obviously been intending it long before, but somehow, somewhere in her studies, she came across mention of the Schofield ring.

"I don't know where she found it. Someone must have written about it, possibly even the magician who set the enchantment. It must have set fire to her head, foolish woman. Here, all the power she could think of, right in a tiny object! No need to exhaust herself over and over again with spells, no need to hide and lie, simply influence, constant and pure.

"Pretending to be her own niece, as I said, she staged her coming out to Society. I was fairly certain of who she was, but I had no proof at all, and she had found herself highly placed friends. No, not Bedrick. I have ever been grateful, my dear, that your upbringing was sheltered enough that it never struck you to wonder how a man merely knighted and a woman of no particular position managed to make such trouble that a Marquis son had to flee them, but I had never intended to dwell on this particular part of our lives. It is, as you will see, deeply unpleasant.

"Thomas, that is enough brandy. I am not so tired I can't exchange it with the water in the fountain, if I so need.

"Edward married as young as I did. His first wife died almost immediately, poor child, and you could not have given Edward anything in the world to look at another woman. It was a matter of great contention between his father and himself, in the end, which is why Miranda got as far as she did. As I said, though I knew her I had no proof, and the spell - you were familiar with it on Dorothea - has the disadvantage of being profoundly subtle and nearly impossible to reveal without magic nearly as intrusive as what was interrupted earlier today. And my husband was so glad to see Edward showing interest in anything - well. His own health was declining. He was, I think, afraid.

"I sent word to Thomas, hoping that the opinion of a celebrated young brother would carry more weight with Edward, at least, than the perceived worries of a mother. Meanwhile, I set about my own inquiries as to what Miranda had been studying and working on. The son of a Marquis is, granted, a tempting target for marriage, but there were even higher stars to aim for, and since the target of her work seemed entirely helpless, there had to be some reason she set her sights so insistently on my son.

"What came next was a great deal of political and careful magical fencing that, I tell you with absolute honesty, is boring and unimportant. I very quickly discovered that Miranda had some rather powerful backers but could not, for the life of me, ascertain who, Bedrick's perfidy became apparent, Thomas managed to trick Edward into using the snuff box with the counter-enchantment and things unravelled for the conspirators - temporarily."

Perhaps because she had only known pieces of this part of the story, the witch found the dowager-marchioness' voice spun round with images: here, a young man so obviously Schofield arguing with a somewhat older man with the same stamp on his features, the argument spiralling upwards into shouting and the calling of names that only family can survive. And there the shape of a woman, handsome, young, and shattering everything she can lay her hands on in a temper. To the witch she smelled of decay and of something left too long in the sun.

There, the brothers of the first reconcile and there, the woman again, her calm icy and determined.

"By then I had, not proof, but a strong suspicion that it was the Schofield ring that was at issue. I was, to put it mildly, angry. I set out to find the thing and have it destroyed. Oh, magic doesn't _stop_ , child, we are always learning - what was impossible in the time of King Edward I is often commonplace now.

"The search cost me - "

But now the witch was pulled away from the words and into thoughts, and they spun her around and drew her in, throwing her from mind to mind and memory to memory. She felt the moment that Thomas Schofield got up and left the room, and the surprise of the young women, the compassion of the old woman, the remembered anger and concern of the man, all left behind in the room while he left, but it didn't matter.

The potion spread her thin, and she encompassed all of it.

She saw her jailer, wreathed in a kind of metaphorical shadow, unknown and unimpeded, drawing in the accusations and threats that can be aimed at a young nobleman who is not too careful about what he says and to whom. Like the orbits of stars and heavenly bodies, she saw Thomas Schofield drawn to France. The deep burning bronze of the star that meant _James Tarleton_ met with the blue-hot glimmer of the younger Schofield son as he fled England, turning "flight" into "duty to the Crown" in a neat diversion. And they stop, and orbit each other, each brighter with the other than alone.

The witch always respected love. Not as easy as the poets made it out, nor as simple, but a power of its own. She did what she did, after all, out of a kind of love.

She saw Edward Schofield burn brightly and then flare out, dead on the altar of Tanistry's revenge.

The stars - one bright, one flickering - that were the then-marquis and then-marchioness spun away from them, to somewhere in Ireland.

 _There was no reason to think that anything other than the French could be a danger to Thomas, so closely under Wellington's command._ It was the idea of the dowager-marchioness' voice, picked out in the darkness. _We made the mistake of assuming that the desires of one conspirator, or even two - Miranda's for the Schofield ring for her own use and revenge, and Bedrick's for simple power - were those of all. Or of the most dangerous in the conspiracy. We assumed, in short, that the enemies you met, and vanquished, drove the conspiracy._

 _Perhaps they thought the same thing._

The witch saw as the then-marchioness held the ring in her hand, and watched, after long hours of magic, as it dissolved, corroding into a powder that the marchioness then blew out over the sea: all influence gone, all power forgotten.

She watched -

 

 _James wakes alone. And this is wrong. There should be another, another body another heartbeat stolen blankets stolen body-heat but there is nothing, he is alone. The wrongness permeates everything._

 _They fought (yes) they fought because Edward Schofield is dead and Thomas Schofield cannot go back to avenge him or, now, at least, in this place, in this time, he will be in over his head. The words 'tantamount to suicide' may have passed James' lips. They fought but James won and Thomas, Thomas is not the kind of sneak out in the night something is wrong. The wrong screams in his head like a downed horse before the gunshot._

 

\- and reflected that it was easy enough to buy traitors, especially when you had the awe of rank as well as the power of money, and she felt almost regretful for the lesser magician. There were turtles (it was said) in the Americas with snapping jaws which, once they closed around their target flesh, could not be forced open until the animal either agreed to open them or died. And that was James Tarleton, when he felt something important.

The witch watched, and found the irony pleasing: half a magician and no-magician, finding the lesser mage who had provided the key to catching the greater. The lieutenant Charles Lowe remembered the little tricks of the Oxford retreat; James Tarleton flinched at nothing; and Mr George Beecham was found.

At the very edge of the witch's awareness she could hear Tarleton's voice now, instead of the dowager-marchioness, and in his hands the story was shorter, sharper, simpler, but the witch simply watched and watched the Marquis of Schofield pretend not to listen at the door -

 

 _The man's face is battered, bruised, bleeding. James wipes the blood off his knuckles and explains, quite calmly, "Your employer might have you killed if you tell me, but I will kill you now and then use your corpse to find what I want, when I don't have to worry about you interfering." This is a bluff. But only a small one. "And before I do that," he goes on, "I will cut your fingers off one by one. I haven't decided what I'll do with them," he goes on, "but I'm sure something will come to me."_

 _Beecham looks up, and he seems to search James' face, while Charles looks pale and very, very young. And whatever Beecham sees there, it is enough, apparently, to rightly decide that the only part that _was_ a bluff was that James is not sure Charles is good enough to achieve the magic required to trace anything through Beecham's dead body. In the matter of the rest, he was deadly serious. _

Granted that he would be shot for treason, almost certainly, there are still worse ways to die, and many, many worse ways to live up until that moment of death -

 

\- and because the witch could see everything and did not need it spoken, his memory of it was in her head, too. She shied from it, she pulled nearly to waking, caught herself only at the last moment. It was one thing to share memories of fear, of anger, of apprehension for another. Even horror, rage, and the knowledge that you do something that may border into evil - all of that was familiar. Part of her. Something she accepted.

She did not want memories of being left on the floor with each hand bound to a different wall, spread across the dirt so that hands could not come close enough to hands to form the slightest symbol of magic, gagged with a vicious thing of steel and leather so no word of defense could be spoken, blindfolded so that even so, nothing could be seen, nothing could be located, nothing could be understood.

Tired and starving and viciously thirsty, and locked always in the nauseating sense of magic used about one, magic _using _one -__

 _She didn't want it and neither did he. Neither did he. The nausea of it jarred her and threw her, and finally she fled._

 _In her own room, she opened her eyes, and knew other things. Tarleton had found Schofield, of course. Charles Lowe had died, and that was why the child was named Charles. Tarleton and Schofield never spoke of it. And since returning to England, they had tried to pretend it did not happen. Did not exist._

 _Benjamin D— was found, but Tanistry and Bedrick managed to slide out of the net. But then, the horror of finding a duke trying to procure such a weapon as the Schofield ring to pass it to Bonaparte, in return for rewards for services had shocked so many people, what were two more to stare with wide eyes and say that they had _never_ thought such treason could be found in such high places! _

Then it was all dealt with. Quietly.

It was put about that he was dead, of course. But the witch had already known that was untrue. She saw him nearly every day, after all, though now he sent servants for his potion. The witch got up from her bed and shivered slightly, chafing her upper arms with her hands.

Tanistry was dead, Bedrick was dead. D— was dying. And he had found her, and caught her, and together they had made the first plan. But impatience was too much for the man - but then, that was what had him in the first place. If he had waited, if he had taken Schofield out of France . . . if he had wizards strong enough to steal the man away, then surely -

She stopped herself. Treachery _in_ Wellington's camp had been necessary to catch Schofield in the first place. But still. To keep him subdued in one place was no easier - indeed, could be less easy, if he got his bearings - than moving him and keeping him subdued would be. Impatience was her jailor's weakness, more so than she'd thought. He had chosen not to trust that her spell would give him what he wanted (Schofield alive and in his hands again, to _watch_ as his wife, child and mother were killed), and had lunged for the briefer, more immediate and, she supposed to him, more certain-seeming gratification of simply killing the man.

Her thoughts were clearing, a little. The more fool he, then. He was old, now, disgraced, in pain, and dying of the same devouring cancer that had killed his cousin and left Schofield Marquis. The witch had known it would unravel, because every plot against Schofield unravelled. The man had the luck of Ulysses, or the love of a god. Or the Devil. But now she could see the threads unravelling quicker and quicker, at the same time that she found herself more in doubt of living to see the end.

The witch rubbed at her wrists, Schofield's unwanted memories clinging to her. This, as she stood now, was bad enough; that kind of captivity, the idea of it, sent another shudder down her spine.


	11. Chapter 11

Kate, showing her usual flare for timing, managed to come out of the room to find him directly after Thomas had accidentally broken his teacup by his fingers tightening too closely around it as he attempted not to think about white elephants, so to speak. He felt his jaw clench, teeth grinding slightly, and waited, with a promise that he would keep his temper regardless of what she said, or how maddeningly the sympathy struck, or how much it made him want to strike her. Particularly if she said anything about the teacup.

She didn't say anything about the teacup, just took it away from him and set it on one of the small tables that generally held whatever flowers someone had decided looked right in the hall. Then she inveigled herself under his arm. She was quite good at that.

"Thomas," she said in a firm voice, "you really must stop trying to keep secrets from me. It never ends well."

Thomas felt a profound swell of affection for her, and an odd kind of relief, and in the end said, "I stole an apple once when I was seven, and promptly broke a window throwing it around, but managed to get away with it by virtue of running very fast indeed."

"And I'm sure somehow that would have come back to haunt us," Kate replied. Thomas kissed the top of her head, and inhaled the fragrance of her hair, as she went on, "It's most certainly our turn this time, darling, you know?"

" . . . I'm afraid I don't follow," he admitted. Granted, it was much more difficult to concentrate on things when the back of his mind was filled with the stink of dirt floor and his own unwashed self, and he kept feeling something in his mouth. It always was. That was one of the reasons he tried his damnedest to forget.

"Your mother got to kill Miranda," Kate said, in a voice of her best logic, "James got to bash Sir Hillary over the head and Cecy got to best him to do it, which makes D— ours. We'll have to think of something really terrible."

Thomas considered that for a moment; in the end he had admit to himself that picking her up and swinging her about to kiss her was possibly more than he was up for, so soon after being laid out, and elected, instead, to remark, "I think you're turning savage."

"Blame the baby," she suggested.

"Can I get away with that?"

"Perhaps just this once." She turned and stood up on tiptoes to put her arms about his neck and kiss him, an enterprise with which he cooperated. "Thomas, you are not to be unpleasant to James. No, not even if you try to convince me it's an obscure and arcane way of showing affection. Neither of you needs to be sharp with each other just now."

"Yes, Kate," he replied, mimicking as best he could her "meek wife" voice that she brought out only when she felt he needed a swat about the ears. She ignored it.

"And if you even think about trying to tell me that I'm not going to France with you, I shall kick you," she went on. "Hard. In the ankle. To begin with. And then we will have a gigantic row and you will lose and you'll feel even more out of sorts with the world than you do already _and_ you'll be angry with your mother and Cecy to boot, so you might as well just not bother."

She was right, of course; he had actually come to that conclusion himself, not being a total idiot. But he could hardly let that one go. "Wasn't there something in our wedding vows about obedience?"

"Mmm, yes," Kate said, unperturbed. "But yours had that bit about protecting, and you just _know_ that the moment I'm out of your sight I'll get into terrible trouble."

Thomas considered that for a moment. "Nicely played," he acknowledged, kissing her on the top of the head again.

"I've been waiting for you to bring that one up, but life's been so quiet and peaceful up till now," she replied. "Now let's go in, before your mother comes out to fetch us."

 

They used the Spring Room again, on the basis that it was already clean and cleared away, and they might as well. This time, only Thomas had to sit within the circle, and he looked about as happy as a wet cat, but said nothing, not even giving a sharp remark. Cecelia could see that he was still quite troubled, but she had no idea how to approach the matter and elected to leave it in Kate's hands.

The tale had been disturbing; being unable to leave parts of it out, Cecelia had listened to James use the most elliptical language he possibly could, and found herself more than a little glad that she lacked some of the experience to fill in the words that went where the ellipses were. War, she decided, whether declared or not, private or public in its scale, was a state not even slightly fit for anything human.

The moment she'd thought this it seemed ridiculous and inane, and yet, still: it remained true. Being married to James, and even further now being involved with Thomas, had fully eroded the heroic ideas about, if not necessarily what soldiers were like, then certainly what it was like to be one.

No matter how much levity or dismissive tones James attempted to inject.

Thomas when upset, however, was rather like a sea-urchin and Cecelia was at a loss for how to approach without getting stung. She decided some extra patience, but otherwise pretending nothing at all was wrong and going about what needed to happen next was the best of her available options.

The spell that was her responsibility was relatively simple. She would cast it, it would take its resonance from Thomas, detect anything around him and also, hopefully, trace back if not the source of his attack, at least the source of his attacker's ability to launch it - to whit, the hair, nail-clipping, clot of blood, et cetera - whereupon she would mark the map in front of her on the low table with a pin.

Lady Sylvia, meanwhile, would cast a much more difficult, complicated and intricate set of protections around the whole thing so that neither Thomas nor Cecelia were open to a subsequent attack. Finally, James and Kate would simply wait.

"Pace," James had said dryly. "Worry. Offer unhelpful suggestions. Believe me, it's very difficult work."

"But you're terribly good at it," Thomas had replied, and then shot a slightly guilty look at Kate.

"Too much practice," James had retorted, and then _also_ cast a slightly guilty look in Kate's direction, leading Cecelia to believe that Kate had had a word with both of them about being kind before they had settled in to the room.

She exchanged her own look with Kate, who rolled her eyes heavenward. Lady Sylvia ignored them all, her eyes half-lidded and a low incantation already begun. It was, Cecelia noted, not Greek.

With Thomas seated on the floor, rather than on the chair (on the basis, he said, that it was a shorter fall if something else went wrong), Cecelia drew her attention back to her own spell and the very explicit instructions Lady Sylvia had given her.

It was not the most complex work she had accomplished, the work with the glass earlier this year she had shared with Thomas being a great deal trickier, but it was entirely unsupported and subject to the odd resonances of Lady Sylvia's magic like an insubstantial bubble above them all. It had strange harmonics, and it simply felt _odd_ when Cecelia's spell started to reach out, through it and yet still contained by it somehow, searching for the threads she was sending it after.

Then the spell told her things, vast, complicated things, and she had absolutely no time to think about Lady Sylvia's magic at all. The spell, in fact, tried to tell her too many things at once, and she very nearly dropped it before she managed to settle everything into the right parts of her attention.

She had thought that tracing the attack would be the difficult part, and it wasn't. Her hand nearly yanked itself to the map, and she got it out of the way, setting in the pin so that she could ignore that part of the spell and focus on the bizarre -

Well, she couldn't tell what it was. It looked sort of like what happened if you dropped a porcelain bowl full of flower, or maybe -

She tried to capture it in her mind, but it drew her, and she tried to follow the cloud to its furthest source and it gave out (it felt like) just near the point on the map where the pin stuck its red head up out of the paper.

Then it was finished, before she had a proper impression, and Cecelia came back to the room to find herself slightly light-headed, being guided by the elbow to sit down beside Lady Sylvia by James, and being handed a glass of water by Kate. Thomas picked himself up off the ground and crossed to them.

"Well?" he asked, with (for Thomas, under the circumstances) relatively good grace.

"I've marked it there," Cecelia said slightly breathlessly, "but there's something _very_ odd." She described the cloud, as best she could, and was gratified to see that none of them seemed to know what it was about, either. "And it felt as if it were _tugging_ ," she said. "As if it were trying to draw you, and it tasted entirely different from the trace of the attack - "

"Wait," Thomas said, frowning. "Tasted?"

Cecelia blinked, and thought about that. "Ye-es," she said, thinking back, "one of them tasted almost like, like a wet forest smells, and the other like - well actually, it didn't. Just felt almost dusty, like having a dry mouth on a hot day."

"Witchcraft," Thomas said to his mother, looking thoughtful. Without actually needing to be prompted, for a wonder, he went on, "Witchcraft, as separate from wizardry or magic as it is practiced through the universities, has an odd tendency to strike one as having a taste, when one encounters it. A number of theories have been put forward as to why, most of them bloody stupid - "

" _Thomas,_ " Kate chided, seeming to have begun noticing his bad language again. Thomas ignored her.

" - and I suspect it comes down to 'because it does'. Witchcraft is . . . . a rather messier discipline than ours, you understand," he went on. "If a magician wants to get across a lake, he will use magic to transport himself. A witch will cast a spell which happens to lead to a tree falling and a man who lives along the lake taking advantage of the opportunity to sell it for firewood and taking his rowboat across the lake so that he happens to be available for him, or her, to hire. Or steal the boat from, depending on the inclinations of the individual witch, of course."

"And all that without anyone having to ask," Cecelia said aloud, smiling to take the sting out. "Who are you, and what have you done with our Thomas?"

"Hush, apprentice," he returned, and she laughed. "The trouble is," he went on, "most witches are Italian or from Southern France or Spain, and I don't recall having made an enemy of any. Indeed, between the various purges and the fact that in times of turmoil the peasants tend to blame them for everything and anything, there aren't that many left. Certainly none of any particular power."

"And yet," Lady Sylvia noted, "one of them apparently had a spell on you from a great distance, strong enough for traces to remain even after its breaking. A spell of attraction, from the sound of Cecy's description."

"Damn," Thomas said, suddenly, and ignored the four voiced reprimands. "Do you have any idea how much fun it _isn't_ going to be," he complained, "to explain to the Prince Regent that I can't go to France because _he_ wants me to, but I have to go and wander up north of Calais until I find something?"

"He cannot possibly object if your aim is to find out who is trying to kill you," Cecelia objected, frowning.

"He cannot possibly object," James corrected her, "if your aim is to find out just who may be a threat to your wife and unborn child. Personal danger might not impress him so much, but even his own set would not be impressed at reckless disregard for the life of a lady and child."

"That is quite true," Lady Sylvia agreed. "You should address this directly, Thomas."

The look he shot her was black, but he merely said, "Of course, Mother."


	12. Chapter 12

Given what was afoot, no journey, particularly not one in haste, could have been pleasant. And theirs was not, particularly.

Cecy was wretchedly ill again on the crossing to Calais, and demanded to know why, if she were aligned to _water_ as Lady Sylvia had implied, travel over it made her so ill. Everyone pondered this for a while, until James offered the opinion that it might actually be a matter of association: the voyage from Dover to Calais was, after all, a voyage from England (which was home, familiar, Cecy's own ground) to France (which was not in any way shape or form), which would also help to account for why the later stages of their last journey to the Continent had not bothered her so much, either.

"In short," Thomas summed it up, "it's not that it's water, Cecy, it's that it's the _wrong_ water."

"That does nothing for the fact that I haven't been this ill since I was waiting for Charles to be born," Cecy complained, and then went to the side to be sick again. Charles looked gravely after his mother and then, when she returned, patted her on the hand in what he obviously felt should be a comforting manner.

Kate kept perhaps quieter than usual, but she did not think anyone else noticed too terribly much. The discourse was, by and large, on the nuances of magic and comparisons of witchcraft and wizardry, and not the sort that led to plans. She herself found it difficult to deal entirely with the emotions that had arisen in the course of the last two days.

She had not often really wished to do another living being harm. Oh, she had _detested_ Miranda, and Hillary, and that awful Mountjoy woman, that was certain. And she had wanted them stopped, and caught, perhaps humiliated and punished, and she had certainly not _objected_ when Lady Sylvia reduced Miranda Tanistry to a pile of screaming dust.

The desire to really, honestly _kill_ , however, was entirely new to her, and she wasn't sure what to do with it. So she played with Charles while his mother stayed caught up in her discussions, and stayed out of the way.

So it was that, with Amelia in patient attendance (really, she would have to ask Cecy to see if Amelia had any sisters as the woman was a treasure), she was playing peek-a-boo with Charles on her lap, James came to join her and remarked, "You seem very pensive, Kate."

She smiled at him, a little wry. "I suppose that is a polite way to put it."

James, very solemn, replied, "I am ever the soul of politeness."

Kate laughed, make Charles look at both of them and grin a two-toothed baby-grin, and James reached over to chuck his chin with one finger. Then Kate sighed, and considered, and then decided on honesty. While James could be horrified by impropriety, she had the sense that, on this particular subject, they were wholly in accord.

"I find myself wishing to kill D— with my own two hands," she told him, truthfully. "But I suspect that I am terribly ill-equipped to do it."

James looked at her warmly, and then seemed to be deep in thought. "Do you still have those sharp-toed little boots that Cecy got for you just before Christmas?"

Kate pulled back the hem of her skirt just slightly to show that she was, in fact, wearing them.

"Capital," he said. "Then I shall hold him still while you kick him with those as hard as you like, as long as you like. Trust me, you shall do more than sufficient damage that way to feel fully revenged."

Kate resisted the urge the lay her head on his shoulder, being as they were more public than made that appropriate, but she smiled warmly at him, and he at her, and the accord brought her a great deal of comfort.

 

They slept in Calais. Or tried to.

The third time Thomas woke up, it was with fairly ill-grace, and he got up and went out to the little parlour of their rooms in his dressing-gown. Kate got up after him and found her own. She was only going to lay a hand on his shoulder and then perhaps ring for some tea (middle of the night or not), but she found that he caught her arm and pulled her to sit with him, so that he could tuck her head under his chin.

There were, she had discovered over the past half-handful of years, compensations for being quite short.

"I had successfully forgotten about all of that, you know," he said, without any explanation of what he meant, trusting her to understand. That warmed her, a little.

"I think I recently said something about trying to deceive me, Thomas," she pointed out. "Given how unwisely you tend to react in times of particular danger. Or when you might need help. Indeed, I seem to recall _meeting_ you - "

"All right," Thomas began, but just to make sure she was clear, Kate went on.

" - and I know at the time you ought to have called on your mother sooner - "

"Will you stop being perceptive, Kate?" he asked, rather plaintively. "It's very inconvenient."

"Gammon," she said, using his favourite chiding word for her against him now. "You know I'm hardly alone in that."

He smoothed a hand over her hair and sighed. This time, the sigh actually sounded regretful, and tired, and even distressed, so that she lifted her head enough to pretend to look him in the face.

"Thomas, you goose," she said, and kissed him on the cheek. "You have nothing to prove to me, you ought to know that, because you _know_ I could never stay married to anyone I didn't respect, and yet here I am. And come to think of it, here Cecy _and_ James are, too, and you know they're both very particular." She paused. "And perhaps your mother thinks you are rather hopeless, but I think mothers _always_ think so - at least, my aunts do, and they're the closest I recall. Besides," she added, "not one of the rest of us would ever have dared to tell the Duke of —— that he would really improve the atmosphere by his silence."

"Although you did lie with an entirely straight face to the Prince Regent," he pointed out.

"I think everyone's lied to the Prince Regent at least once, Thomas," Kate objected. "Besides, I hadn't any choice. And I wager that now you're not both trying to shelter us extremely, James could tell us any number of other stories wherein you were particularly brave or reckless."

" . . . yes," Thomas said, as if struck by the sudden thought. "I shall have to find a way to stop him doing that - "

Kate prodded him in the shoulder, but he caught her chin and kissed her lightly on the mouth, as if in reply. "What would I ever have done if I hadn't met you, Kate?" he asked, and then added, "Do _not_ , I tell you, give me a factual answer to that question."

Kate smiled at him. And if he woke up twice more from bad dreams that night, he at least seemed resigned rather than distressed, and muttered inappropriate Spanish and went back to sleep.

 

In the morning, Thomas called them all together and said, with an almost impish grin at Cecy, "I have something that you might call a plan."


	13. Chapter 13

Her jailer's first fault was impatience. The second was a judgement clouded by preconceptions.

The witch began the adulteration of his potion subtly, so subtly that he did not note the change in taste, nor the slight change in colour. It took some time before what he drank each day was two things, rather than simply the one he wanted, and he was not a jot the wiser.

His bought magicians were oblivious, as well. They didn't know this kind of magic.

Preconceptions about family, preconceptions about blood, preconceptions about what one sex might know and the other not. These would trip him, and badly. Part of her wondered what might have happened if it had come to a fight between her jailer and the Tanistry woman, for the now-destroyed Schofield ring. If the Tanistry woman _had_ been so foolish, in truth, as to assume her backer wished the same thing she did.

It was easy for men to assume they knew more than a woman.

Now, of course, nothing remained but to wait, and hope: hope that luck, or the remnant pieces of her spell, were enough to draw Schofield here at the _right_ time, when her jailer was elsewhere. Hope, also, that her appraisal of Schofield, of his wife, of the dowager-marchioness, of all of them had been correct.

Thus: hope that she would get out of this alive, and with everything she needed.

The witch resisted the call of the potion on her mantel. She had used it far too much, of late, and besides, it wouldn't do anything but give her best cause to worry if the worst was to come, and that was foolish. It was out of her hands, and she chose to believe it would end well.

She would die deluded, or she would live vindicated, and either way, she had done all she could.

 

It began to rain softly, just before they came.

It felt as if she had been waiting a very long time for this, though it had only been a few months - no, perhaps that wasn't true. Part of her had been waiting for part of what this was for a great deal longer than a few months. It was odd to face it without resentment.

In a slight genuflection to vanity, she had changed into one of her cleaner dresses and combed her hair and put it up. She had tidied this room she had been living in for so long. And she had prayed, quietly, that the timing would be perfect.

She heard them, heard horses and the sound of a springs and wheels, and quiet voices. It would look odd from the outside, she knew, the dilapidated old building with its light in one window. The witch sat herself in the chair and waited.

She had seen them all on her wanderings, her dreamings, of course, but it was still something of a revelation to see them living. Tarleton took it upon himself to open the door, with his wife directly behind him, as if ready to cast spell. Then came the young marchioness, then the marquis, and then, finally, the old.

The witch ignored all of them, for the moment, looked at the Lady Sylvia Schofield (whose eyes had shot wide, as the witch had expected, the moment she had managed to see past her son). Quite calmly, pleased she would have this if nothing else, she said, "Hello, Mother."

Their faces were a study. It took a great deal, in fact, to keep the laughter from bursting out: the young marchioness with her mouth actually open in surprise, Tarleton looking as if someone had fastened his eyebrows to his hairline, his wife making a perfect "oh" with her lips, and Schofield himself frowning in profound consternation.

"Muriel," her mother said, her own expression having been recovered to her control almost immediately. "It's extraordinarily good to see you alive."

It was, Muriel reflected, the sort of thing one might say in their family, such as it was. Her mother went on, "Although it was very unkind of you to allow me to believe otherwise for so long."

Slightly to Muriel's surprise, the first question out of her half-brother's mouth was a rather curt, "How old are you?" She let one eyebrow rise, but their mother answered first.

"She is three months shy of twenty, Thomas, as you have no doubt already divined. Get me something to sit on, one of you."

Schofield turned on his mother with an expression of slightly shocked betrayal that was, in the end, exactly what Muriel expected. What he said, however, was not, as he accused, "You told me you spent those months with Eva," and the truth was he seemed more annoyed at the deception about her location than anything else.

"I lied, Thomas," their mother replied calmly, as Tarleton's wife brought over the padded stool. "You were seven, I was not about to open the subject with you."

"Yes, but then you lied when I asked you where they might have - "

"I did not lie, I misdirected," she interrupted him. "With a suggestion. Besides, it was equally plausible seeing as, as I have just said, I thought Muriel was dead." And she gave Muriel a hard look.

"Well, I was angry with you at first," Muriel demurred, "and then I was far too deeply in trouble to want your rescue anyway. Then I got farther in."

"Just," said the young marchioness, "so that I don't go mad with the hints - Muriel is your daughter," she said, looking at Muriel's mother, "and you thought she was dead, and Thomas didn't know she existed which I suppose means that she is Thomas' half-sister and _that_ was how D— managed the magic he did?"

"Succinctly summarized, yes," Muriel's mother replied. "Now, of course, I would like to know why."

Then Tarleton's wife's eyes lit up and she pointed at Muriel. "You're the witch!" she announced. "I can feel it, it's everywhere here, but it's very faint, it's almost like the sound of a river when you've been sitting beside it for too long and you don't hear it anymore, but - "

"I suspect," Tarleton said, "we should start at the beginning."


	14. Chapter 14

She was rather taller than most women, with hair of the colour of dark honey and a strong resemblance to Lady Sylvia which, of course, made sense. She was also, well, obviously with child.

Her face wore an expression that said, on no uncertain terms, that she knew exactly what they all thought of her, had weathered far worse, and would not deign to show them the slightest hint of weakness. Her surety made Kate immediately contrary, and determined to show reserve, and generosity.

Thomas merely looked put out. Lady Sylvia sighed, and said, for the benefit of them all (James leaning against the wall, Thomas pacing and peering at things, Cecy attentive), "When Thomas was six, his father and I had a falling out. At the time, we both felt it likely to be a permanent estrangement, and we shared a mutual understanding. As it turned out, by the end of the year we missed each other terribly and discovered that we were better suited than we'd thought."

"Unfortunately," Muriel interrupted placidly, "I had already resulted. These things happen, you understand, and there are quite ordinary ways of dealing with them." Her tone was sardonic. "At least, if people refer to you customarily as 'my lord' or 'my lady'." She shrugged. "I was raised here in France, in a rather comfortable school, until I ran away at sixteen." Her gaze remained quite steady, as did her voice. "A great many things happened then, many of them unpleasant. By the autumn I had found a refuge with a very kind woman, who insisted I stay with her when I showed aptitude for magic."

"I should hope you did," Thomas said, dryly.

"But she was a witch, not a magician," Cecy sought to clarify, after shooting Thomas a quelling look, something Thomas of course ignored.

"Indeed," Muriel agreed. "She died last year. Shortly afterwards, D—— found me." She canted her head towards Thomas. "He hates you a _very_ great deal, my lord," she said.

Thomas rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. And don't pretend you thought that meant whether that piece of filth hates me or not."

Muriel seemed to contemplate that for a moment. Then inclined her head. When she went on, Thomas glanced at Kate, and was clearly trying to put a wealth of information into a single look. As if she was going to be cruel to his half-sister, however . . . irregular and scandalous the entire situation.

Really, so far as scandal went, not a single one of them had a single leg to stand on; only _Thomas_ wouldn't see that.

"One of the skills one learns after making a very great mistake," Muriel said, "is how to discern highly . . . dangerous situations. In this case, it wasn't particularly difficult."

"Why didn't you run?" James asked, but Kate thought she already knew that answer. Muriel shrugged.

"I had a three year old child and lacked a marriage certificate of any kind," she said, simply. "At first, he maintained the pretense that he simply wanted doctoring, of the kind witches are best able to provide. Then he pretended that his attentions were more personal. It took him some time, and much sounding of my supposed resentment, before he finally came around to his real purpose. I don't know how he found out who I was. Bribery, probably. Possibly magic.

"At any rate, he believed he had two holds on me. One is that this child is his." Her face once again dared anyone to say anything about it. "Although," she continued, "if I have my way the babe will never know it. The other is that a few days after we began he removed Émilie from my care 'to make sure there were no distractions'." She said this with commendable calm, but Kate could see her fingers tighten. "I don't know where she is. I know where _he_ is, or I can find out. He presumed this would remain a hold on me, but I am not quite so naive as to think he had any intention of allowing me to live. At that point . . . " she shrugged again.

The sense of her resignation struck Kate and disturbed her. It did not seem to sit right that a young woman, a woman near the same age as Kate herself, be so calm when talking about her own death, and the possible death of her child.

It did occur to her that the young woman might be lying, particularly given she was a self-admitted witch, but Kate didn't think so. For one, it would take a very bold woman to lie to Thomas _and_ Lady Sylvia, and with such a lie; for another, she suspected Lady Sylvia and Thomas both had spells in place for such an eventuality. They had spent quite a _lot_ of time preparing this morning.

As if she perceived Kate's thoughts themselves, Muriel turned to Kate and said, dryly, "All of this is, of course, quite verifiable, assuming we all survive until tomorrow and you wish to take the time to make queries at Amiens." She drew a breath and continued the story. "Originally, I had intended to use a rather complex spell to draw you to me," she said, speaking directly to Thomas. "I gambled, I will be quite honest, on your luck, your knack for survival, and the tendency of the schemes of others to fall to pieces around you. A hazard that payed off, as it happens. However, I overestimated D——'s patience, and he elected to make more direct use of our connection. I am sure you are aware of the results.

"He is doing all of this," she concluded, "because he is dying, and that focuses a man's mind on his unsettled scores. As to what happens next, I have no idea." Her hands tightened on each other on her lap again. "I am primarily concerned, you understand, for Émilie's safety. I had to take the gamble, but she is in quite a lot of danger."

"Well of course, our first concern is her rescue," Kate said, immediately, and ignored everyone turning to look at her. "You said you could track D——? We should locate him immediately and make our plans."

Muriel blinked, and glanced at Thomas.

"I married her on purpose," Thomas replied, blandly. "I'm presuming you've managed to learn a great deal about us? It's what I would have done in your place."

"Of course," Muriel replied.

Kate glanced at Lady Sylvia, who was silent, and had been since Muriel took over the tale. It struck Kate that behind her mother-at-law's eyes there was a great deal of emotion, much of it conflicting, being viciously repressed. That followed, Kate supposed. Relief, anger, fear, perhaps love, and certainly new concern for a grandchild. And, Kate supposed, perhaps embarrassment.

It was, Kate realized, much like her own ambivalence about her mother-at-law knowing about the arrangement between the four of them. The nagging sense that one ought to be terribly ashamed when one wasn't at all, along with a profound resentment that anyone should be _allowed_ to have an opinion on so private a matter.

"It shouldn't be difficult," Thomas was saying. "We find D——, deal with him, and then find Émilie - with so many people so talented at the magics of bloodlines," and his tone turned sardonic, "locating her ought to be a matter of idle ability."

"Your arrogance," said a new voice from the door, which none of them had been watching, as Muriel had held their attention, "has always been your weakpoint, Schofield."

 

Cecelia watched Thomas' half-sister's face turn very pale, and wished it were possible to reassure her. Then again, perhaps it enhanced the effect they desired.

Thomas' smile had turned very feral looking, to tell the truth; dangerous, self-satisfied, and no little vicious. "And here I thought it was part of my winning charm. Hello, Robert."

Their adversary had a pistol, and it was pointed directly at Kate's head, which rather increased Cecelia's agitation about the whole enterprise _considerably_. However, there remained no reason it shouldn't work, as long as she maintained her control, and Thomas hadn't been . . . exaggerating.

She felt James' reassuring hand on her shoulder, and steadied her own breathing. She let her eyes close, blocking out the distressing scene, and paying scant attention to the words.

"Sylvia," D—— said, in a mocking imitation of courtesy. His voice held a note that made it sound as if he were completely out of breath, and in the hand that did not hold a pistol he there was a stick he leaned on heavily.

"Did you know, Robert," Lady Sylvia said in a conversational tone, "I always promised my husband I'd see you dead. I'm really quite pleased to be able to keep the vow."

"Yes, given you managed to break certain others." D——'s tone took on an insinuating note. Cecelia heard Lady Sylvia make an unlady-like snort.

The room here was thick with the residue of old magics, of (presumably) everything Muriel had been doing. Cecelia did her best to ignore them, to lean on the pillar that was the sense of James, and to enmesh him in the spell-work she intended to do. Very slowly, she slid her hand into a pocket of her skirt and took hold of the river-stone, the feather, and the bit of weed from the overgrown grounds outside, gripping them all tightly. Then she began to breathe the incantation, as quietly as she could.

Thomas was still watching D—— with that peculiar smile, and Kate was as composed as anything. Lady Sylvia's face was entirely cast in disdain. Muriel, of all of them, was the one most distressed - but then, she didn't know.

"You are in pain, Robert," Muriel observed, and their enemy sneered at her.

"Don't think I didn't know you were adulterating what you sent, you foolish little chit. Or that I don't have you marked for death the moment this is over." His eyes glittered, and he added, "The daughter follows in the footsteps of the mother."

Cecelia finished her incantation and murmured, _fiat_. Thomas must have caught the feeling of it, and his smile widened every so slightly.

"Robert," Thomas said, his voice full of profound, savoured enjoyment, "I am reliably informed that no common cur could possibly repent and be absolved. Therefore, I sincerely wish you to convey my regards to Miranda, when you join her in Hell."

D—— may have made some reply, or he may have merely been about to simply shoot Kate and have at the rest, his revenge being quite complete in that, at least in his deranged state. Instead, Thomas made a single gesture with his right hand and, in his own turn, said " _Fiat._ "

Cecelia felt the sudden pull, like being caught in the current of a tide when it goes out, or maybe better to say like she was cheesecloth stretched over a flowing pump. It surged and pulled and she held fast against it as she had before, and felt Thomas take what flowed past and through her and shape it as if it turned to clay.

What happened next was extremely unpleasant, and in the end, Cecelia looked away. The sight of a man turning, with great pain (from the sound of it) and many intermediate stages, from man to dog would remain in her memory from that day forward, but in the end, she could not watch the final stages. It seemed that Thomas, Kate, James and Lady Sylvia all could, though Cecelia noted that Muriel, too, looked away.

In the end, D—— was left on the floor, a white-and-black spotted mongrel, very old and whining in great pain. Without a word, Thomas stood up, went to where the pistol that D—— had dropped during his unwilling transformation had fallen, and Cecelia looked away a second time as he fired it into the pathetic thing's head.

"That," Thomas then said, putting the pistol down on a table beside him, "was _entirely_ satisfactory."

Kate got up and threw her arms around his neck so that she could pull him down and kiss him. James looked regretfully at the dog's corpse, as if he felt it was actually quite enough. Cecelia felt quite light-headed and stayed exactly where she was.

Muriel blinked at them, and Cecelia came to interpret that as the girl's expression for "I am quite unsettled but hanged if I'll show it". "That was . . . . impressive," she said, slowly.

Lady Sylvia had raised an eyebrow at her son. "That was _quite_ over-dramatic, Thomas."

"Cecy has wanted a demonstration of forced metamorphosis for some time now," Thomas replied with aplomb, his arm about Kate's shoulders. "This seemed an excellent opportunity."

"Émilie," Kate said, firmly, before anyone could be further sidetracked by banter, relief or disgust. "We must find her at once."

 

In the end, restoring daughter to mother was perhaps the simplest part of the whole affair, which (so far as their mutual associations had so far extended) was, if tumultuous, at least straightforward. The trail of the girl led directly back to Calais, from where it was quite easy to enlist the aid of the local gendarmes to break into the house where she was being held, subdue the men inside, and send small, crying child flying into the arms of her mother without wasting any time.

James turned away from the scene. Charles was safely with Amelia at the inn, but Muriel's closed eyes and slightly crumpled face as she rocked her daughter back and forth where she had collapsed into a chair struck at some shared heart of parental terror nonetheless.

The girl Émilie was dirty, hungry and very upset, but seemed otherwise unhurt; the rapid-fire conversation in French between her and her mother led to increasing (wrenching) relief on the face of the latter, and in the end, little Émilie simply put her thumb in her mouth and leaned her head on Muriel's shoulder.

Lady Sylvia watched both Muriel and Émilie with a profoundly possessive air. Thomas cleared his throat and made remarks about the congeniality of justice in France, by which James was not in the least fooled.

What was to be done about Muriel and Émilie, it seemed, was clear to everyone _except_ Muriel. Émilie took the news that Lady Sylvia was _Granmère_ with a childish equilibrium; Muriel looked quite startled, however, when Thomas informed the child that he was _oncle_.

Kate seemed quite unwilling to relinquish Thomas' arm, so in the end, it was Cecy who linked hers through Muriel's to take her apart a little and explain.

"Kate, darling," Lady Sylvia said, firmly, "you and I need to speak."

Kate looked mildly mutinous, but did go apart a little ways, leaving James and Thomas standing together.

"Well," James said. "That's well over."

"I think we may be damned to exciting lives," Thomas said thoughtfully.

"If we are -" James began, but Thomas rolled his eyes.

"Yes, yes, you blame me."

"Actually," James replied mildly, "I was going to see I think we're well covered, but yes, it would be your fault, too."

Thomas blinked, and then laughed aloud. Then he wiped a hand over his eyes, showing that he was tired for the first time, and said, "Do you know what the Hell of it is?"

" . . . .which one?" James asked, "The disaster you'll have explaining this, or - ?"

"Oh don't be ridiculous," Thomas said. "We'll lie. Nobody will believe it, but nobody will dare challenge us, they've all far too many things of their own to hide. No, I mean the fact that we're all going to have to behave ourselves until we get back to London. One scandal at a time, after all."

Cecy and Muriel sat in the carriage that would take them back to the inn, Émilie sitting on Muriel's lap. James' laughter startled all three of them.


End file.
